Piotr Anderszewski. Source: askonasholt.co.uk
The Polish-Hungarian composer received the award for Best Instrumental Disc in magazine's public vote, as well as the main Jury Prize for Recording of the Year for his live rendition of of works by Robert Schumann
In response to the win, Anderszewski said he was honoured to receive the award and his passion for "Schumann's music, am happy that I have been able to communicate my passion with this CD and grateful that it has been so wonderfully received".
The winning album was released last year by Virgin, presenting a live recording of a varied programme performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall, featuring Schumman's Humoreske, Op. 20, Studies (6) in Canonic Form, Op. 56, Gesänge der Frühe (5), Op. 133. The album was up against Steven Osborne's recording of Ravel's Complete solo piano music and Benjamin Grosvenor's Piano music by Chopin, Liszt and Ravel in the Best Instrumental disc category.
Piotr Anderszewski is one of the world's most brilliant contemporary pianists. The Independent has called him "breathtaking and 'unforgettable" and the Daily Telegraph has praised the "intellectual power, profound emotional response and keen imagination that his playing conveys... Anderszewski’s remarkable ear for tonal shading and nuance is absorbingly to the fore". He has performed at London's Barbican Centre and Royal Festival Hall, the Wiener Konzerthaus, Carnegie Hall New York, the Mariinsky Concert Hall in St Petersburg and Munich's Herkulessaal. His has performed with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston, Chicago and London Symphony orchestras, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Royal Concertgebouw. He has been recording on the Virgin label since 2000, releasing several prize-winning albums, such as Beethoven's Diabelli Variations which won the Choc du Monde de la Musique and an ECHO Klassik award and a recording of the works of Szymanowski that won the Classic FM Gramophone Award in 2006 for Best Instrumental Disc. His recording of Bach's Partitas 1, 3 and 6 was nominated for a Grammy in 2005. His latest recording of Schumann's works also won the ECHO Klassic award in 2011 before taking home two BBC Music Magazine Awards in 2012.
BBC Music reviewed in the album in January 2011, giving it five stars and remarking on how
Here, and throughout this treasurable release, he combines a superlative pianistic tonal palette with an immensely sophisticated rhythmic vocabulary, a rare capacity to illuminate Schumann's polyphonic textures, and a gift for thematic conversation fit to make most performers, not excepting conductors, look to their laurels. Schumann's unique combination of intimacy and drama, like his quicksilver juxtapositions of vividly contrasting characters, has proved eternally elusive to all but a relative few. Of that few, none excels Anderszewski. His account of the beguiling Humoreske is Schumann playing of the highest class, as indeed is the rest of this recital. Bewitchingly compelling.
Piotr Szymanowski is currently on sabbatical and plans to resume his tour in the summer of 2012, with a programme extending throughout 2013.
Source: BBC Music Magazine, anderszewski.net