The only artist of the kind

Music lovers and critics say that he is a romantic and a perfectionist. Sometimes they wonder whether he is a man or a robot. The only thing that is certain about him is that he belongs to the world’s most eminent pianists. He started playing the piano at the age of five, which comes as no surprise if we look at his musical family. His first piano teacher was his father. Later, his teachers used to say „there is something to him”, and projected a great career ahead of him.
This is, of course, Krystian Zimerman who has just celebrated his fiftieth birthday.
Being fifty years old is the best moment for an artist, as it combines both the energy of a young man and the maturity of an adult. And this is true for Krystian Zimerman, both in his private life and in his music.
His international piano career started after he won the Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1975. Being awarded in a competition does not, however, automatically mean conquering the world, but for Krystian Zimerman, with his talent and charisma, it was enough. Already as a very young artist, he performed with the greatest conductors of the world: Karajan, Bernstein, Boulez, Ozawa or Abbado.
The first five years following his victory in the competition are described by critics as „the romantic period” in Zimerman’s career. All musical scenes in the world wanted him to play with them, and impresarios competed about him. But Krystian Zimerman did not give in to fame. He stopped all his undertakings and went to London to work and set some artistic goals for himself.
– I needed a safe perspective to look at myself – says the artist, who is not very keen on giving interviews.
– And what were your conclusions?
– I decided to carefully choose proposals to give concerts so that I could have at least five months in a year for working on my repertoire.
To appropriately use time and manage the talent is a great challenge for artists who wish to intelligently and professionally plan their careers. And Krystian Zimerman is undoubtedly an intelligent and a hardworking person, and he knows what to do with his unique talent.
Therefore, he does not perform too frequently, giving 40 concerts a year on average. He has his favorite concert halls, there are also halls he never visits. One of the concerts that never took place, which Zimerman has been regretting since then, is his performance with musicians from the Berlin Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan planned for June 1982 and cancelled because of the martial law that had been introduced in Poland.
Krystian Zimerman does not release records too often, yet if he does release something it is always a perfect work of art that sells very well. And each of them presents musical masterpieces starting from Mozart and Beethoven, through Schubert and Schumann, Brahms and Liszt, Ravel and Rachmaninoff, to Debussy, Bartok and Weber. Music lovers sometimes wonder why there are no works by Bach on this list. They claim that the artist may not wish to reveal his vision of Bach’s music yet.
Zimerman’s repertoire does not, obviously, lack the works by Polish composers. He loves Chopin and Karol Szymanowski, whose works are hardly ever absent from Zimerman’s concert programs. In 1980, together with a Polish violinist, Kaja Danczowska, he recorded one of the best interpretations of „Myths” by Szymanowski. The CD was a gift handed to over two hundred critics from all over the world during the first presentation of the compact disc technology in Salzburg in 1981. Zimerman decided to do this so as to promote the music by Karol Szymanowski. The works by the Polish composer, Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969), are also always present in Zimerman’s repertoires.
Krystian Zimerman is the only artist of the kind. He can play the piano in an absolutely perfect manner, the way he plays seems to be the top of abilities of a man and of the piano, and such words are hardly ever used by critics. The Polish artist, I am absolutely convinced of that, will surprise music lovers many times in the future as well.