Pianist Rafał Blechacz, now thirty years old, is a rare guest in Poland these days, and the public welcomed his recent appearance with Warsaw Philharmonic under Jacek Kaspszyk on February 24. He was the featured soloist in Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, and the orchestra also programmed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 that evening.
Writing for Rzeczpospolita, Jacek Marczyński concluded that:
Blechacz came across as a mature pianist who came on stage with his own, clearly-conveyed interpretation. He treated Beethoven’s Third Concerto with panache and wide dynamic range. Simultaneously, with the rich modern piano sound available he nonetheless tried to use sonorities closer to those of the older instruments. […] For the warm appreciation by the public, Blechacz rewarded the audience with two encores—a fragment of Beethoven Sonata and a Chopin Mazurka.
Ten years ago Blechacz won the prestigious Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Since then he has recorded works by Chopin, Szymanowski, Debussy, Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn, among others for Deutsche Gramphon and has received the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award in 2014.
[Sources: thenews.pl, rp.pl, onet.pl, blechacz.net]