Today I am talking to pianist Peter Jablonski. We discuss piano repertoire in and outside the canon, how careers take time to develop, and wonder about the influence of social media on the longevity of a career in music.

Peter Jablonski is an award-winning internationally acclaimed Swedish pianist. Discovered by Claudio Abbado and Vladimir Ashkenazy, and signed by Decca in his seventeenth year, Jablonski went on to perform, collaborate, and record with many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Kirov (now Mariinsky), La Scala Philharmonic, Tonhalle Zürich, Orchestre National de France, NHK Tokyo, DSO Berlin, Warsaw Philharmonic, Philadelphia, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Cleveland Orchestra; Vladimir Ashkenazy, Valery Gergiev, Andris Nelsons, Daniel Harding, Kurt Sanderling, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti, and Myung-Whun Chung. 

Jablonski has performed and recorded the complete piano concertos of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Bartók, and all ten piano sonatas by Prokofiev. Hailed an ‘unconventional virtuoso’ (Present Arts), during his three-decade-long career, Jablonski developed a diverse repertoire that includes works by Barber, Gershwin, Szymanowski, Lutosławski, Copland, Stenhammar, with most recent additions of such Scandinavian and European composers as Valborg Aulin, Elfrida Andrée, Laura Netzel, Johanna Müller-Hermann, Grażyna Bacewicz, and Alexey Stanchinsky. 

 Composers with whom Jablonski worked include Witold Lutosławski and Arvo Pärt, and he has had a number of works composed for, and dedicated to him, including Wojciech Kilar’s Piano Concerto, for which he won the Orpheus award for the world premiere performance at the Warsaw Autumn Festival. Jablonski remains a supporter of today’s composers and regularly gives world premieres of new works, together with those that have been neglected by music history. 

Jablonski’s extensive discography includes recordings he has made for labels such as Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, Altara, Octavia, and Ondine. He received numerous accolades for his recordings, which include the Edison and the Grammophone Classical Music Award.

Peter Jablonski is the recipient of the Litteris et Artibus medal for his services to culture, granted to him by the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf. He is also the winner of the prestigious prize Årets Svensk i Världen (International Swedish Personality of the Year), receiving it before ABBA and Astrid Lindgren. 

www.peterjablonski.com
Twitter: @Jablonski_P
https://www.ondine.net/?lid=en&cid=2.2&oid=6707