Michael Wladkowski’s enthusiasm and artistic curiosity have led him to explore a repertoire spanning the works of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy to works by Alkan and Szymanowski and on to works of contemporary composers such as Thon Tat Thiet, Antoine Tisné and Tolia Nikiprowetzky, who have dedicated major works to him. This constantly expanding artistic horizon leads Wladkowski beyond the convention of classical performances to connect with audiences. His performances the world over have been unanimously greeted with enthusiasm. Wladkowski has ignored linguistic and cultural barriers. He studied in the United States, Poland and Austria and speaks fluent English, French, German, Polish, Russian, Hebrew and Italian.
Michael Wladkowski is a remarkable, an authentic musician. Wladkowski’s passion for the younger generation finds an outlet in his piano class at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris where his students include many prize winners of international piano competitions. Among his many recordings for Solstice, REM and Peyrole are the piano works of Karol Szymanowski.
1. What was your first musical experience?
I still remember that episode today as if it was only an hour ago, it was that I listened to Beethoven’s work. I was very young, I was 9 years old and I wanted to be a painter or a writer or something like that, but when I heard that, I knew that it was over for me, but it means that it was such an experience that it changed my life so much. Also, Chopin. Because I loved music, but not simply like that. It upset me to a point I was sick to have listened to that. It was very exhilarating. Exalted music. I think, as a young child, I was a little exalted too.
2. You’ve lived and worked in different countries; how did it influence your musical development?
Yes, it influenced me a lot. First, of course I worked in the United States, but at the beginning, I was in an institute, the Palestrina Institute. It was an institute of Catholic liturgical music. And then, we studied primarily Gregorian chant. Obviously, we also had piano, counterpoint, music history etc. But it revolved around the sacred liturgy. And then I studied piano… I had a wonderful piano teacher who had studied with Edwin Fisher, Arthur Schnabel, and then first with Carl Friedberg, who was a student of Clara Schumann, it was a 19th century music concept. And then I studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. It was really very pleasant. And then there were a lot of concerts. It was their music, there wasno music from other countries, it didn’t exist. Yes, it was only the music of Austria. Austrian. When I finished, I still wanted to play dierent kind of music, and I played Karol Szymanowski, I played Debussy, I played Aaron Copland…And then, my teacher was very open to all that. I have also studied in Warsaw, at the Warsaw Conservatory. There was a lot of new music. It was even very focused on 20th-century contemporary music. And also, we asked, there was Polish music. We had to play Polish music and a lot of contemporary music. So, it was very dierent. It was much broader in terms of horizons. I never studied in France, but I remember when I was already a teacher at the École normale de musique Alfred Cortot, but it wasn’t like now when everyone is playing Rachmanino, there was nothing of this kind. It was only classical music, a lot of Chopin, Schumann, and then it there was Debussy and Ravel, and that’s it. But really, that was it. And then I remember, there were exams, I listened, half the students played either Ravel’s “Sonatine” or “Jeux d’eau”, it was all day the same. Obviously, now, it has changed completely.
3. Was that the most memorable moment of your career as a pianist on stage?
Once I played Chopin’s Second Concerto in Korea and in the great hall in Seoul, the Korean Arts Center, and the orchestra was very good and then the conductor was great… and we were all very good, really… I liked it very much. And then, I knew it was like a dream. It’s rare. I was very happy. It was a moment where I was very happy. I felt that there was something. And that was very memorable. I think it was a particularly memorable concert.
4. Let’s talk about your musical program during the Piano Revenge Festival. Why Szymanowski, and how important is this person, this composer, to you?
First of all, I always really liked the music of Karol Szymanowski. I think that he’s a great composer, and relatively unknown even that there are people like Simon Rattle, who did all the works of Szymanowski with the orchestra, and then Valery Gergiev in Russia, he conducted all the great works of Szymanowski…As for me, I studied in Warsaw with a composer named Piotr Perkowski. And he himself was Szymanowski’s favorite student. So afterward, he told me a lot of things, like anecdotes and other details. I learned a lot; he told me about his personality, how he sees the piano, etc. And then the orchestra too. There are some recordings of Szymanowski. He knew the secrets of the piano. Really, he wasn’t a virtuoso like Rachmanino or Liszt or Ferruccio Busoni or people like that, but he knew the secrets of piano sound. And I discovered a lot of that with Piotr Perkowski. And I hope that with my experience I will bring something that is very personal. I really know the whole work of Karol Szymanowski quite well. And I would like to share the experience of a whole life with this music that I love very much. I recorded almost everything, already twice. Once when I was young, very young in Warsaw still, and then a second time 20 years ago. It’s an exalted music, even the language was very avant- garde for the time, but it’s not an intellectual music. That means that it’s of course very intelligent, but it’s not an abstract music. It’s a music that must go to the heart of the listener. And that is why I really like this music and I would like to share that with the festival audience.
5. What is more essential for a pianist: discipline or imagination? Can one succeed through willpower or how must one study the piano?
To tell the truth, for me, I think you need both, because imagination is extremely important, but you have to have the means to express what you imagine. There you go. I don’t think we can simply make music. For me, that means the problem is that I think there are people who have the idea that we use music to play the piano, but that means the secret of the piano is that we’re always making music. In a way, with the piano is that we can create a sound! That means a cat can climb on the keyboard and make sounds, right? Or with the violin or something else, it’s not like that. But on the other hand, it’s not music. That’s my idea of the piano. You know, it’s the biggest cemetery in the world because there are so many dead notes that weremade on the piano, one cannot even imagine! That means that if the notes aren’t right on the piano, the sound starts to disappear right away, but the music, the music is the energy… So, one must hear the reality. The sound makes a diminuendo. But most of the time, music, a sound has a virtual energy that brings this sound, towards the next note. So, you have to listen to the reality, which is the sound that goes away, a natural diminuendo, and then the musical reality is the opposite. One can say, ah yes, it is just like a typewriter, a jackhammer, things like that. But that’s the eect because in fact, making music on the piano is more dicult in a way than, for example, if you sing or play a clarinet or something like that, automatically the breath animates the sound, right? So, we have to continue. Now, on the piano, you can make a lot of notes with your fingers without the ear and the will and the virtual energy, musical listening being activated. So, that’s actually what’s important. And then, if we do that, the piano, is indeed, it’s extraordinary. But if we don’t do that, it’s lamentable, it’s dead. So, I find that every musician always works on both things and then I personally find, of course, that you have to work on technique and then I do that a lot, but I think that technique is also linked to discipline and then demands. More than imagination is rich, normally we must have demands that discipline us, that can channel the imagination. And I don’t really believe people who say: “If I had Emil Gilels’ technique, I would even play better than Gilels… ” I don’t think that’s how it is. I think that here, discipline and imagination are interconnected, aren’t they? One doesn’t exclude the other. Often people are so concerned about the hands and not the ear, aren’t they? Of course, the hands are very, very important, but I think music is, above all, about the ear.
6. Where can a musician look for inspiration and what is your creative motto?
I think that inspiration is in life! First of all, in each person and in their reactions to life and their spiritual reactions, the world beyond, isn’t it? And then, I think that’s above all what we seek inspiration from and how we react to the language of music. This is the goal, this is the case with great composers, is to deliver their emotional world, above all. I think that most composers want their music to be loved by others. And then, I look for inspiration there, in emotions too, and it can be sensations, for example, of colors. We talk about colors often for music. Actually, it’s a visual dimension. There are a lot of colors in music. And the more I feel there’s an emotion linked to the colors, I get really inspired. To tell you the truth, I don’t have a motto, I just want the instrument to sound right and when I do it, it would touch the person listening to me. That’s it, that is what I want.
7. What do you think of neoclassical piano music? What would you say its significance is?
I think that this period that we call, neoclassical, is a period, I find, very interesting because we see how people reacted when the reference points, many, many reference points, historical and stylistic, disappeared. And then all of asudden, the world had changed so much. We have a past and we look for new things. That means that’s where neoclassicism came from. We each looked for new forms in our own way, didn’t we? And not just forms, let’s say, a sonata variation, etc. But also, the way of communicating music, because for each person, it has to be organized so that it can be communicated to others. Otherwise, it will only be the sounds. And I find that there are so many dierent ways and that people, with their cultural heritage, have reacted to be able to communicate musical ideas. It’s really fascinating. There is such a profusion of styles, I find it so fascinating. So many things happened, with the hindsight of 100 years. And now we see many of those things that are very dierent but at the time, we see common things in people, in artists. It is very interesting.
8. Can we still hope for innovations in piano music?
Yes, I think so. I know, for example, for Polish music, after Chopin, people were still so crushed, that there were no Polish composers who wanted to write for the piano. And Szymanowski was one of the first, who, let’s say, took up the torch in a way. But for example, I think that the one he really took up the torch was Alexander Scriabin. And then the other Russian composer who is not well enough known, is Anatoly Lyadov; it’s perhaps less grandiose, surely less than the great genius Scriabin, but he’s really someone who, who in a certain way really took Chopin’s style, he made a continuation. Then Debussy too, we can even say that it’s, afterwards, very dierent. Even his last work, he dedicated it to Chopin! We can’t, in my opinion, imagine Debussy without Chopin. The imagination and the fantasy and the possibilities, all is there! And then we saw a lot of things happened already in the 20th century. But I really like listening to what is written nowadays and I heard some interesting things.
9. What association does Paris evoke for you? What was most striking upon your arrival in the French capital?
When I’m in the Latin Quarter, I always remember that in these same streets, they walked at the time, in the 13th century, Albertus Magnus and Saint Thomas Aquinas. And Saint Bonaventure, and then they were the professors at the university. They are among the three greatest geniuses in the entire history of humanity, and then it was in Paris they lived. They were students, both were students of Albertus Magnus. That means a lot for me. We can still feel their presence, their time, and that it does mean that everything is still here now, at the present, isn’t it? But all of history is present and still alive at the same time. And I like to feel that, that these people, they were there and then now with us, and in all generations. There were several moments in Paris, great moments, including many artists. Also in the 19thcentury, there was Liszt, there was Berlioz and Chopin… All these people were in Paris. Delacroix and the great French poets! All those creative beings in Paris at the same time. So, when I came to Paris, I really felt that. The history.
10. The festival will take place at the Île Saint-Louis theater, where pianist and composer Alain Kremski often performed, and all participants will play the piano he once owned. How did you meet Alain? Can you tell us a little more?
Yes, I knew Alain and then I heard him play, and then I spoke with him a lot, and he was a man of very broad intellectual and spiritual horizons, and he had at the same time an extreme sensitivity for sounds and the colors of his music. But at the same time, he had a very high and very spiritual idea. It wasn’t just sensuality, but even that aspect was, I think, important in his music, that I know. He also gave me some of his recordings. There were two things. There was the sensual aspect and then, that same sensuality was translated into many ideas, ideas of high spirituality. And also, metaphysical.
11. We live in an era of incredible technology, and the arrival of artificial intelligence has already scared many artists. What is your perspective on this topic?
You have to have a very deep culture, and only then you can really benefit from things. But I don’t know how deep is the risk, it could risky… separating people with a real culture, real know-how, and then people who are slaves to what artificial intelligence will give them. It could be dangerous. I worked for Warner Classics, for the recordings, and I was told that there was someone who corrected all the errors of Maria Callas voice. And then, they published that. But what’sthe point? It doesn’t sound good. There’s the emotion and the way of preparing a note, a pianissimo in the treble. That means it becomes quite small and it has no interest; we’re removing precisely the human side, which ultimately is the thing that has the most value, and even if there are extraordinary creations. But that’s not what counts.
12. Apart from teaching and everything you’ve already done, what is your artistic project?
Yes, actually, I have a project because my teacher, who was Szymanowski’s student, was also Roussel’s student, Albert Roussel, who is also very close to the École Normale Supérieure. And then, he’s also a composer whom I like a lot and who isn’t really known for his true worth. I have a project to play this music, perhaps record it and put it on YouTube. To perform each work and talk a little about the work from a musical, aesthetic, artistic, pianistic point of view. And then, to discuss it further. Because these two works, these two composers are less known than they should be. And I know them very well. And what’s more, I studied with their students! Isn’t that amazing?! So, I really would like to do that.
Discover Michael’s music here: https://michael-wladkowski.com/disc/
