Dr. Colin Eatock, composer
  • Home
  • About Colin Eatock
  • Composing
  • Catalogue of works
  • Writing about music
  • Eatock Daily (blog)
  • New and upcoming
  • Contact me

Interview With Janina Fialkowska

5/9/2013

0 Comments

 
PicturePianist Janina Fialkowska.
Here’s my interview with pianist Janina Fialkowska, from the Houston Chronicle.

When Janina Fialkowska returns to Jones Hall on Thursday to perform with the Houston Symphony, she’ll walk to center stage, sit down at the piano and play Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 – with both hands.

That may sound like an odd thing to say. But anyone who heard her last Houston Symphony appearance, in 2002, will recall that on that occasion she played with one hand only. The piece was Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, but Fialkowska played it with the only good hand she had – her right.


At the time, she’d just had a tumor removed from her left shoulder. Her doctors feared that the operation would end her career.

However, Fialkowska was determined to continue any way she could.

“You do desperate things when you’re in a desperate situation,” the soft-spoken 61-year-old Canadian pianist said.

She first noticed something wrong with her left shoulder late in 2001. And when a biopsy revealed a stage-three cancerous tumor, she underwent surgery, even though it meant removing some of her muscle tissue.

“The amazing thing,” she recalls, “is that I wasn’t worried about dying from cancer. I was worried that I might never play the piano again.”

As soon she had recovered from her operation, she turned her attention to the small clutch of piano pieces written for one hand only. Much of this music – such as the Ravel concerto and also a concerto by Sergei Prokofiev – was composed for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I. It’s written specifically for the left hand, but Fialkowska worked out ways to play this repertoire with her right hand.

“I played 12 or 13 concerts this way during the two years when I couldn’t play with both my hands,” she says.

Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska will be a featured soloist with the Houston Symphony this week.

But her one-handed performances were only a stopgap measure. Determined to return to two-handed form, she put herself on a regimen of piano practice.

“I would go to the piano and practice every day,” she says. “And the sheer act of playing the piano was therapeutic. That’s something the doctors hadn’t figured on.”

However, Fialkowska was careful as to how she went about it.

“At first it was just for an hour. But now I can play for up to 3½ hours a day, without a problem.”

Once she felt ready to return to two-handed performances, she soon encountered another obstacle: finding a concert manager to book her engagements. Fialkowska was damaged goods, and it was by no means certain that her return to an active performing schedule would be a success. Managers gave her a wide berth.

That’s when Fialkowska’s husband, Harry Oesterle, stepped up. Oesterle ran a music festival in Germany, but he set aside his own work to manage his wife’s comeback.

“Harry never wanted to be my manager,” she explains, “but it just kind of worked out that way. He always says that there’s nothing worse than a spouse managing a musician’s career – except perhaps a parent!”

Several more surgeries followed the removal of her tumor. But after years of struggle, her long ordeal eventually came to an end: Fialkowska has been cancer-free for six years now.

So how did the experience change her as a pianist?

“I’m a different pianist now,” she says thoughtfully. “And I like to think that I’m better. In the old days, I could learn things very quickly, and could cram nine hours of practicing into a day, if I had to. Now, I take much more time over my repertoire, and I have to plan literally years in advance. It’s only logical that this should benefit my playing, it’s just that I never did it before.”

She continues: “I also focus more on my left hand. You’d think it would be my weaker arm, but because I have to concentrate on it more, it’s made my lower notes more interesting. Before, I was very much a right-handed pianist.”

Since she’s returned to her two-handed career, Fialkowska has built a schedule of 35 to 60 concerts per year. And she’s returned to recording, with a new disc of piano music by Franz Schubert scheduled for release this fall, on Montreal’s Atma label. As well, she plans to record about two dozen of Chopin’s mazurkas next month.

When not playing the piano, Fialkowska gardens, hikes and reads mystery novels. She’s also writing a memoir, which she hopes will be completed by next November. In it, she reflects on her life in music – including her illness and her ongoing struggle to recover from it.

“My left arm is perfectly fine for playing the piano,” she observes, “but it can’t do much else. I can’t reach up or reach out with it. It’s completely handicapped, except for playing the piano – which I find highly amusing.”


© Colin Eatock 2013
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Eatock Daily

    I'm a composer based in Toronto – and this is my classical music blog, Eatock Daily.

    When I first started blogging, Eatock Daily was a place to re-post the articles I wrote for Toronto’s Globe and Mail and National Post newspapers, the Houston Chronicle, the Kansas City Star and other publications.

    But now I have stepped back from professional music journalism, and I'm spending more time composing.

    These days, my blog posts are infrequent, and are mostly concerned with my own music. However, I do still occasionally post comments on musical topics, including works I've discovered, enjoyed, and wish to share with others.


    – CE

    Archives

    March 2022
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    June 2020
    September 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011

    Index

    Click here for an alphabetical list of blog entries.

    RSS Feed

    Follow colineatock on Twitter
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.