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Chopin Society offers Polish prodigy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
RECITAL REVIEW
Stanislaw Drzewiecki, pianist, presented by the Chopin Society of Atlanta. Sunday at the Roswell Cultural Arts Center. www.chopoinatlanta.org.
Keep an eye on the Chopin Society of Atlanta. Last October, the non-profit society presented the local debut of an obscure young pianist from Argentina, Ingrid Fliter. By January, she was famous: After winning the $300,000 Gilmore Award, major international orchestras were clamoring to book her, including the Atlanta Symphony.
Local piano mavens knew that the Chopin Society and its founder, Dorota Lato, herself a pianist, got there first.
Sunday evening at the Roswell Cultural Arts Center, the society hosted another brilliant and obscure young pianist, Stanislaw Drzewiecki, an 18-year-old from Poland. If he’s not yet the mature, complex and complete artist of Fliter’s caliber, his program of popular favorites by Chopin and Liszt proved exceptionally satisfying. With longish golden hair, a somewhat aloof manner toward the audience — maybe the lights were shining in his eyes? — and wearing a 19th century-style knee-length black jacket, Drzewiecki appeared every bit the romantic artiste, more poet than craftsman.
Yet from his opening group — the G-minor Ballade, Op. 23 and the C-sharp minor Nocturne — the prodigy’s humble approach was clear: a thrilling, note-perfect accuracy at the keyboard, even in the most treacherous spots; cogent, well-argued interpretations; and an unostentatious, let-the-composer-speak approach. What few chinks we heard in his technical armor were likely the fault of the piano itself. The Roswell arts center doesn’t own a concert-quality piano. Suitable instruments are almost impossible to rent locally. So he performed on Chopin Society president Lato’s own living room Steinway model D, a big Hamburg nine-footer that served its purpose, more or less.
In the Polonaise in A-flat, Op 53, Drzewiecki initially took a regal and slightly pompous stance — the king enters his court — but soon we noticed a glimmer of introspection, and its natural by-product, vulnerability. This monarch has his self-doubts, just like the rest of us.
Drzewiecki was most convincing in Liszt’s “Paganini Etudes,” six demonic little masterpieces that explore the colors and weight of the instrument. His hands were a blur of trills and lightening-fast runs down the keyboard, yet he also opened up the quirky harmonies and odd figurations. This was Liszt cut with a very sharp knife. So it seemed the young Polish pianist leans not toward Chopin’s dreamy romanticism but deeper into powerhouse repertoire. I’d love to hear a program of Rachmaninov miniatures from him, or even a motoring and modern Prokofiev concerto. At the moment, Drzewiecki’s talent seems boundless.
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