DANIEL WNUKOWSKI

Hailed as “rapturous and glowing” by International Record Review and “an inspirational and devoted pianist” by Life & Arts – Financial Times, Polish-Canadian pianist Daniel Wnukowski has performed throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia in prestigious concert halls. He has performed with many orchestras, including the Polish Radio Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Windsor Symphony, Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana, Poznan Philharmonic, Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic with conductors such as Jerzy Maksymiuk, Alain Trudel and David Amos. He has also performed in numerous International Festivals such as Chopin and His Europe in Warsaw, Poland; Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy; Chopiniana in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and the Pre-LSO Concert Series in London, UK.

During the 2018-2019 season, he placed a special focus on the music of Karol Rathaus, a Weimar-era composer whose music came to Mr. Wnukowski’s attention in 2016 through his work with Exil.Arte, a Vienna-based organization whose mission is to restore “degenerate” music. In February 2019, Mr. Wnukowski performed the composer’s Piano Concerto with The Orchestra Now conducted by Leon Botstein, as part of a Rathaus Festival presented by the Copland School of Music at Queens College, where Rathaus was on faculty; made his sold-out Carnegie Hall debut in a program that included the composer’s Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 20; and released an all-Rathaus recording of solo piano music on the Toccata label. For these performances, Mr. Wnukowski was called “a formidable pianist” (ConcertoNet) and “a pianist to watch” (New York Classical Review). Mr. Wnukowski will also be featured in a documentary on Rathaus produced by Lev Deych & Michael Haas.

Daniel Wnukowski inaugurated the 2017 year in Warsaw, Poland as a special guest at the National Philharmonic Hall, performing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” under the direction of Jerzy Maksymiuk. The concert was broadcast live on television and a commercial DVD recording was made available. On May 5 that year, he performed at the Austrian Parliament in remembrance of Holocaust victims targeted by Nazi Germany. This deeply, meaningful event was also broadcast live on Austrian television for ORF-2.

During the 2015-2016 season, Daniel Wnukowski performed a solo piano recital tour in China. He also performed a recently published piano concerto by a Polish-Jewish composer, Jozef Koffler, who had died during the Holocaust. This performance was recorded live in Warsaw, Poland, with Sinfonia Iuventus under the direction of Krzysztof Slowinski and released on commercial CD by the EDA label in February 2018.

During the years 2013-2014, he recorded and edited the complete piano works of Walter Arlen, an Austrian composer who had escaped the Holocaust, for the Austrian record label Gramola and publisher Doblinger. He is the recipient of numerous scholarships and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and other foundations for promoting the works of exiled Jewish composers of the early 20th century including Szymon Laks, Karol Rathaus, Józef Koffler, Władysław Szpilman and Viktor Ullmann.

In May 2011, his all-Liszt recital was recorded and broadcast over European and U.S. radio stations. In the beginning of 2010, he inaugurated the Chopin year in Poznań, Poland, together with Metropolitan Opera Soprano Aleksandra Kurzak and was chosen as a Samling Scholar. In May of that same year, he performed a special recital in Tokyo, Japan, to commemorate the unveiling of a new Chopin monument in that city. This also led to a debut in Singapore, in the hall of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. His outdoor concert at the Singapore Botanic Gardens received rousing ovations by a crowd of close to 3000 people.

He was trained at the Lake Como International Piano Academy in Italy where he worked with distinguished artists such as Dmitri Bashkirov, Menahem Pressler, Claude Frank, Fou Ts’ong, John Perry and William Grant Naboré, at the Peabody Institute of Baltimore under the guidance of Leon Fleisher and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London with Graham Johnson and Ronan O’Hora.

Dedicated to giving back to the country that nurtured him as an artist, Wnukowski was recently awarded a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to perform outreach concerts for remote, Indigenous communities in Canada together with five other pianists. Visit pianosix.com for more information. He is also founder and artistic director of the Collingwood Summer Music Festival.

 

– VISIT DANIEL’S EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT PAGE TO LEARN MORE – 

 

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