Biography
Michał Karol Szymanowski
A Polish pianist and conductor, Michał Karol Szymanowski was born in 1988 into a musical family. He began his musical education and formal piano training at the age of seven at the Arthur Rubinstein State Music Schools in Bydgoszcz where, for 12 years, he sharpened his skills under the guidance of Ludmila Kasjanenko. He graduated with honours from the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, where he studied piano with Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń
and symphonic-operatic conducting under Zygmunt Rychert. He honed his skills with Eldar Nebolsin at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. At present he works as an assistant professor at his alma mater, teaching the piano.
Michał has won top awards in a number of national and international piano competitions, including: Moniuszko International Competition of Polish Music in Rzeszów (2021), International Chopin Piano Competition in Darmstadt, Germany (2017), MozARTè International Piano Competition in Aachen, Germany (2016), Chopin Competition in Daegu, Korea (2015), Zarębski International Music Competition in Warsaw (2012), Yamaha Competition in Katowice (2011), Paderewski Competition in Bydgoszcz (2010), Horowitz Competition in Kiev (2007). In 2015 he represented Poland at the 17th International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.
Michał has performed in many concerts across Europe and throughout the world, including the Palace of Nations in Geneva, the Paul VI Audience Hall in the Vatican City (a concert for Pope Benedict XVI), Warsaw’s Belvedere Palace (for the Polish President), numerous philharmonic halls as well as major festivals in Poland and abroad, among them Oficina
de Música de Curitiba, Festival Chopiniana in Buenos Aires, Festival Europeo de Solistas in Caracas, Festival Pianistico di Roma, the Long Lake Festival in Lugano, and the Chopin and his Europe Festival in Warsaw, where he brilliantly performed piano concertos by Paderewski, Wieniawski and Stojowski.
Michał has performed under such eminent conductors as: Alfredo Rugeles, Juri Gilbo,
Jacek Kaspszyk, Antoni Wit, Grzegorz Nowak, José Maria Florêncio and Marek Pijarowski. Apart from solo repertoire, Michał does also perform chamber music, often giving concerts with: the Silesian String Quartet, the Szymanowski Quartet, Erzhan Kulibaev, Romain Garioud, Benedict Kloeckner, Maciej Kułakowski, Anna Maria Staśkiewicz, Maria Machowska and other artists.
He has released two solo albums for CD Accord (Naxos), featuring compositions by Chopin, Paderewski, Szymanowski and Wieniawski. The recordings were critically acclaimed.
One of the reviews said: “this is heartfelt music-making of the type one associates with such luminaries as Uchida, Schiff and Brendel”.