Some Concert Reviews:
It may happen once a season or once in a lifetime. Along comes a talent, not merely your run-of-the-mill virtuoso, but someone, something extraordinary that makes you rethink a piece of music you thought you’ve known forever. It happened Thursday night: the piece, Grieg’s Piano Concerto; the talent, Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski.
Jablonski has all the technical talent he’ll ever need. But what’s truly astounding is that he already has the spiritual weight to match…. When the notes are played they are transcendent. This reviewer has heard pianists run out the same hackneyed phrases for decades, yet none in living memory has brought the same strength, confidence, finesse and sense of rediscovery to these well worn notes.
Washington Post
"Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" can rival any Rachmaninov concerto with reference to the abilities required of a performer. With this in mind it is lucky that Chailly chose such a prodigiously talented and technically faultless soloist. For Peter Jablonski all the difficulties of this piece passed unnoticed as he reached to the core of Gershwin's highly emotional music... After "Rhapsody in Blue" the marvellous Peter Jablonski interpreted beautifully Gershwin's Variations on "I got Rythm" [...]"
Leipziger Volkszeitung
It was an electrifying performance of George Gershwin’s Concerto in F. Mr Jablonski offered the sort of approach that let one take virtuosity for granted and simple gaze in admiration of Gershwin’s melodic invention and rhythmic insouciance. If the score is a work of genius, so was the pianist’s interpretation.
Washington Times
Overwhelming impact… Undoubtedly the most staggering recital of the entire festival. Such extraordinary energy, intensity, inwardness and musical insight, all grafted on to a technique of transcendental brilliance and supreme control that is amazing, even in this age of proliferating virtuosity. I will be able to boast in later years of hearing a young Horowitz or Rubinstein at the threshold of his career.
New Zealand Evening Post
Turn to Peter Jablonski and you have a young eagle in full flight who is in complete mastery of his instrument. Be it soaring in the Liszt B minor ballade or gouging burning flesh in the Scriabin ninth sonata with his great talons, it was some of the most memorable pianism I’ve heard.
The Australian
In Tchaikovsky’s 2nd Piano Concerto, all ears were tuned to the wondrous piano playing of Peter Jablonski. He made real music of a mammoth. The delicacy and inspired colouring of his playing lifted the music’s spirit. His determined rhythms, tempered by all sorts of nuances and differing emphases, made it buoyant.
The technical pressures of the concerto held no fears for him. But it was the additional dimension of artistry and musical insight that made the performance so memorable.
Daily Telegraph, London
From the 1st note of Peter Jablonski’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1st Piano Concerto (conducted by Myung-Whun Chung), I was captivated. He played the piece magnificently and unaffectedly, giving a delightful performance.
Ongakuno-Tomo, Tokyo
‘In his solo recital Peter Jablonski gave a fresh performance of a wide ranging programme. His Liszt (Hungarian Rhapsodies) were consistently tense and finely rhythmic. His playing of Debussy’s ‘Feux d’artifice’ was exquisite’.
‘This artist, who made headlines with Ashkenazy, showed that he is a pianist befitting these headlines, a fresh new artist for the new century’.
Ongakuno-Tomo, Tokyo
During the concert evening of the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester in the Philharmonie, the young pianist Peter Jablonski, with experience in jazz committed himself to George Gershwin. During his Concerto in F he displayed outstanding abilities, effortless but full of power, skipping over all the symphonic hurdles with internal and external drive resulting in final exultation - which nobody could hold back anymore…. Jablonski had brought the house down.
Die Welt. Berlin
He managed to combine springy rhythms and nonchalant ease with lyric expression,sparkling playing and an almost impressionistic sonority ,which was greeted by the audience with outbursts of spontaneous applause
Zuericher Zeitung
What is truly sensational about Jablonski is neither his age nor his technique but his artistic judgement. While most colleagues would thank their lucky stars if they possessed his fingers,he instead puts virtuosity in the background to concentrate on making music in sharply defined pictures without ever loosing his cultivated and beautiful sound.
Svenska Dagbladet (Stockholm)
Not every Pole has the measure of Chopin’s mazurkas, which are some of his most personal pieces. Jablonski captured their private aspects very naturally…as if to the manor born.
It was refreshing to hear Liszt’s well known 11th and 15th Hungarian Rhapsodies played with joy and elan, rather than in a spirit of barnstorming bravura. It was also nice to hear, between the two warhorses, the very little known, and surprisingly subdued, third Hungarian Rhapsody.
The Independent. London
The reputation of the La Scala Philharmonic attracted an audience of over 2000 to sundays concert but of even more interest was the performance by swedish pianist Peter Jablonski.
He was invited to perform works by Lutoslawski and Rachmaninoff.
These works were written at different times but the inspiration of both was to allow the pianists brilliant technique to shine.
Jablonski seized this opportunity,what's more,he avoided the impression of virtuosity for its own sake that other pianists often give,especially in the Rachmaninoff.
Instead he produced tremendous pianism.The performance was wonderfully thought through and moved forward with great certainty and developed exactly the right atmosphere for each of the variations
Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw)
Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski who, in his simple, non-dramatic style, proved himself to be the dream performer of the concerto, a work in which brilliance alternates naturally with poetry and tenderness
With this sudden romantic surge, Grieg reveals a nature that feels quite close to our French spirit. And this balance was well expressed by the young Swedish pianist, with his simple yet sensitive touch and his impeccable technique which was made outstandingly obvious in a short piece, composed by Jablonski himself, in which to our greatest satisfaction, the pianist moves about his instrument as nimbly as a cat.
Le Figaro. Paris
On Sunday evening, he presented, as part of the “Klavier Festival Ruhr” in the almost sold out concert hall, music of very different artistic characters - and he proved that he is no longer a promising up-and-comer but long since a master interpreter.
In three pieces of Peter Tchaikovsky’s cycle “The Seasons”, Jablonski’s playing was smart and powerful but at the same time particularly unsentimental.
Sergei Rachmaninov’s "Etudes-Tableaux" are virtuosic finger exercise and musical poetry at the same time. Jablonski knows how to preserve transparency and has been looking out for the finest dynamic differentiations. The jagged melodic line is characteristic for Rachmaninov’s music. And Jablonski knows this, paying attention to it, particularly in the seventh etude.
In the second part of the program, the pianist proved that he is the perfect interpreter of Debussy’s works. With a selection of the « Préludes » and the first book of the “Images” he has created transparent pieces between cool limpidity and a sentimental search of the poetical idea.
Debussy’s „L’isle joyeuse“ (The isle of happiness) was a glowing, virtuosic symbol of great delight and a stirring finale for this musical evening acknowledged with warm applause.
WAZ
The Young Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski is an eloquent ambassador for Tchaikovsky’s neglected piano concerti, with playing of honed delicacy impressively balanced by power and depth of tone.
The Guardian. London
The real high [point, however, was the pair of Paganini-inspired pieces. Peter Jablonski was the soloist. The finest of today’s young pianists, he attacked Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody with bravura, panache and mercurial wit.
The Guardian. London
The performance (of Prokofiev’s 8th Sonata) was a tremendous feat of engaged, virtuoso pianism that left the audience stunned.
Pianist Magazine. London
The brilliant musicianship of Peter Jablonski. .. The Middle movement (of Prokofiev’s 3rd Piano Concerto), touched with melancholy, had a Mozartian clarity and lightness that recalled Prokofiev’s own recording of the piece and in the finale Jablonski set the tone with his spitfire attack.
The Times. London
Jablonskis playing was radiant.He accessed the drama and the lyricism with his phenomenal technique... the piano sang with a beautiful voice under his fingers....(Beethoven concerto nr.5)
BLT
Jablonskis light, transparent touch, with exquisite passagework and clear ornamentation did full justice to the sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti.
VK