Skip to content

Lisiecki recital for Bravo Niagara! part of four-month tour

Jan Lisiecki, now 27, signed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon at just 15 years old. (Christoph Kostlin) Four-plus months, 12 countries and more than 30 cities.
Jan Lisiecki, now 27, signed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon at just 15 years old. (Christoph Kostlin) 

Four-plus months, 12 countries and more than 30 cities. That’s what’s on the agenda for 27-year-old classical pianist Jan Lisiecki between now and September.

Mark down a Bravo Niagara! Festival performance on April 26 as an early part of that itinerary. 

Lisiecki’s Tuesday solo piano recital at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in downtown St. Catharines follows his three-night engagement at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, where he will be accompanied by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. 

Just three days later, he’ll leave for Switzerland for the first leg of his tour. He’ll stop in Germany, France, Italy and Spain before heading to Seoul, South Korea for a single show, then it’s back to Germany before winding up in Brazil for three straight nights at the beautiful Sala São Paulo Concert Hall.

After a brief respite, Lisiecki returns to North America on July 7 for three performances of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos at Boulder’s Colorado Music Festival. Another rest, then it’s back to Europe for the second leg of his tour, taking in Germany, Monaco, Italy, Poland and Switzerland once again. 

Though it looks like an exhausting schedule for the faint of heart, the one-time child prodigy is eagerly looking forward to the experience. 

“It is very busy, and there is a lot going on,” he says on the phone from his Calgary home. “It’s wonderful to be back into a full schedule where we don’t only have certain countries presenting concerts, as we’ve had during the pandemic. And we can actually play in Canada now, which is very important.”

Lisiecki has been wowing audiences everywhere since his first concert recital at nine years old. At only 13 he performed at New York City’s prestigious Carnegie Hall, and was invited to the 2008 Chopin Festival in Warsaw, Poland to perform with Sinfonia Varsovia and Howard Shelley. 

A year later he was featured on CBC’s The National in a segment entitled The Reluctant Prodigy, during which Pinchas Zukerman, music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, insisted that talent of Jan’s magnitude happens only two or three generations apart. Lisiecki signed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon the following year, at just 15 years old.

That 2008 Chopin Festival performance seems to have left a lasting impression on Lisiecki. Four of the 10 albums in his discography feature the Polish composer’s works exclusively. And his most recent release is a Juno-nominated collection of all 21 of Chopin’s Nocturnes. His local appearance will be a solo performance of those pieces.

“It’s an easy association,” Lisiecki says of his relationship to Chopin. “Because of my own Polish roots I feel an affinity to Chopin. My appreciation of his music comes from a place as a musician, but more specifically as a pianist. He was able to write in a way that used the capabilities of the instrument to its fullest extent.”

Like Lisiecki, Chopin was also a child prodigy, having begun to compose some of his earlier works before his 20th birthday. He moved to France, where he formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and captured the attention and admiration of contemporaries such as Robert Schumann. 

Chopin was known for writing all of his compositions on and for the piano. His Nocturnes, written throughout the composer’s lifetime, are often described as intimate and personal pieces of music. Because of that, they can be challenging to play to a concert hall audience.

“It’s music that should be played from the heart and the soul,” Lisiecki tells The Local. “But at the same time, you have to share those emotions, those private thoughts, with a large audience. It’s very easy to close yourself off in a bubble. But you have to have an interaction with an audience. If they can’t associate themselves with the music then it doesn’t bring an understanding.”

At 27 already a veteran of the classical circuit, Lisiecki points to his Canada Day 2011 Parliament Hill performance to an audience of over 100.000 as the true highlight of his career. That’s mainly due to one special audience member. 

“Meeting the Queen (Elizabeth II) was a great privilege,” he recalls. “It’s something I will remember for the rest of my life. It’s more important than any of the other things I have ever done in my life. And I got to represent classical music to the whole country, too.”

Lisiecki has supported a number of charities over the years, including Polish Humanitarian Action and both the Make-A-Wish and David Foster Foundations. But the nearest to his heart is UNICEF, for whom he became an ambassador to Canada in 2012.

“I have seen their work in action in different places,” he says. “It’s something that is easy to get behind universally. It is so basic and essential that children should have access to the basic necessities of life, including education, things we take for granted in Canada. Children are the future.”

A recent New York Times article referred to Lisiecki as “Piano’s Doogie Howser.” He laughs at the comparison to the TV program about a child doctor that went off the air two years before the first-generation Canadian was born.

“I think we as humans strive to put labels on things,” says Lisiecki. “Words often fail us, where music doesn’t. I’ve been playing concerts for well over a decade. Certainly when I was a pre-teen the label of child prodigy was accurately applied. I tried to stay away from it, but at times I had to explain it. I understand why it takes place.”

As CBC’s Joe Schlesinger stated in The Reluctant Prodigy, unlike most others who show such talent at a young age, neither of
Lisiecki’s Polish-born parents, Anita and Zbigniew, play an instrument or even sing. They will be accompanying him as part of his support team during his four-plus month sojourn. 

“Because they aren’t musical, I have been able to learn exactly who I want to be, what I want to do and how I want to do it. It doesn’t come from a legacy, or preconceived notions. They were incredibly supportive, but they never pushed me to continue in music. They made sure I knew that I could have done anything else in life.”

Pushed to expand on that last comment, Lisiecki recalls moments when he may have considered becoming a doctor, a pilot or a lawyer. But in 2022 he can’t imagine doing anything other than playing music. And audiences around the world, including right here in Niagara next week, are the luckier for that decision. 

Tickets for Jan Lisiecki’s April 26 performance at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre’s Robertson Hall are available at the Bravo Niagara! Festival website,
bravoniagara.org.