On this album, Peter Jablonski’s third for Ondine, the pianist presents Grażyna Bacewicz’s (1909–1969) dazzling piano etudes and sonatas, barely known outside her native Poland. Jablonski’s albums have received an enthusiastic response and his previous release received Editor’s Choice from Gramophone magazine.

In recent years the music of Grażyna Bacewicz has been enjoying increasing popularity in concert hall programs. Bacewicz was a major Polish composer and a versatile musician: a child prodigy violinist, she was also an accomplished pianist. As a composer, she is known for her inventive, complex, and original musical language, and particularly many of her works for violin are well known. Bacewicz studied first at the Warsaw Conservatory and briefly continued her studies in Paris before returning back home. In 1934, she received a position of concertmaster at the Polish Radio Orchestra. This position proved invaluable to her as a composer, giving her insights into each instrument’s possibilities and orchestral composition. Her music displays many characteristic traits of the twentieth-century that are to be heard in the writings of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Bartók, and Lutosławski, among others. Jablonski’s piano album covers only eight short years during which the works presented here were composed and brings together, for the first time, both piano sonatas, and both sets of etudes. Sonata No. 1 for solo piano was composed in 1949, but went unpublished for over seventy years until Peter Jablonski edited it for PWM.

REVIEWS:

The two-fold pleasure of this release is experiencing the interesting if unfamiliar music of an important woman composer, played by a pianist in the full flower of his mature, imaginative artistry.

-- Gramophone (Editor's Choice, March 2022)

Bacewicz’s imagination is vast—as Jablonski’s stunning, post-Lisztian performance reveals… He persuades us that Bacewicz’s Etudes are up there with the great sets (Chopin, Liszt, Ligeti)…this is a very valuable release.

--International Piano

There’s a sense of Bacewicz’s compositional imagination really taking wing in these pieces, and Jablonski commits to her vision. The First Sonata feels full of ambition, and Jablonski draws out all of its rhythmic and emotional complexity.

--BBC Music Magazine

Graźyna Bacewicz was probably the most important Polish composer between Szymanowski and Lutosławski...she was also an excellent pianist, good enough to perform in public on this instrument also, and she composed a fair amount for it. There is too much to fit onto one disc and so all recordings of her piano music have involved choices.

Peter Jablonski has made an excellent choice here. Indeed, I think he has chosen the best of her piano music, which has involved excluding some attractive but lesser works.

I have nothing but praise for the Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski’s performances here. Not only is he in full command of the many notes and often complex textures but he articulates them and makes them musical. There are good notes (in English only) and the recorded sound is excellent. This is now the Bacewicz piano recital to go for.

--MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)

This splendid disc will appeal both to piano mavens and fans of good twentieth-century music alike. Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-69) was a very distinguished composer, and although better known (perhaps) for her solo violin pieces, she had a real feel for keyboard sonority and color. All of the music on this splendidly played disc is worth hearing.

You can listen to this first-rate disc straight through without a moment’s hesitation. It should win her many friends, I should think, not just for Jablonski’s excellent interpretations, but also for Ondine’s gorgeous sonics.

--ClassicsToday.com

Brilliant playing of music that belongs firmly in the concert repertoire.

Of all the female 20th-century composers whose work is now being rediscovered and reassessed, the Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) may be the most accomplished and individual. Once a child prodigy on drums, Jablonski’s rhythm is rock solid, but he is also capable of creating a flow. His dazzling, sympathetic performances are tremendous.

--Limelight