“Christina Petrowska Quilico is one of the absolutely best young pianists. She has both greatest imagination and pianistic technique and a most exceptional artistic sensibility.” – Gyorgy Ligeti, composer “I didn’t think anyone would play this piece, but when Christina performed it, I loved the sound and what was happening as the hands interacted. And I loved the little tunes and motifs that could be heard in the interaction between the hands. It takes a whiz-bang pianist to make those heard. I don’t know how she does it!” – Ann Southam, composer, referring to Rivers “She has an intuitive understanding for any composer she cares to play…always there is maximum clarity and intensity. She graces every nuance with a delicate touch, never missing a note. Her ability to weave webs of poetic pianism is intoxicating. There is color in every note, a brilliant performance. Chopin’s Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise concluded an absolutely compelling concert. Here the artist displayed romantic pianism of the sweetest kind, evenly weighted and colored beautifully. For an encore she tossed off La Campanella by Franz Liszt with virtuosic panache.” – The Edmonton Journal Of the three-CD set of Southam’s Rivers (2005), American Record Guide wrote: “The performer must simply execute in a very skillful and highly aesthetic way, what the composer wrote. Kudos to Christina Petrowska Quilico…for doing exactly that.” Of her two-CD set of Southam’s Pond Life (2009), the monthly magazine WholeNote wrote: “Her virtuosic command of the keyboard brings these works to life. With theatrical flair she balances the fine gradations in pitch and rhythm to create subtle shifts in mood, from nostalgic contemplation to irrepressible joy.” Her 2008 double-CD set, Ings, a compilation of performances by Canadian, American, French, English and Japanese 20th century composers, recorded for CBC Radio over the years, was heralded by the national Globe and Mail as “****…Amazing…for the amount of virtuosity and variety Petrowska Quilico has squeezed onto a mere two discs.” “Ten fingers that sound like 20...a student of Rosina Lhévinne, Miss Petrowska reveals her heritage promptly in the crystalline finger technique, the clean, crisp styling, the vibrant tone color and trills that border on the phenomenal.” – International Herald Tribune, reviewing Petrowska Quilico’s Paris recital debut, recorded for ORTF (French Radio)
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Christina Petrowska Quilico
pianistBiography
Petrowska Quilico trained at the Juilliard School in the grand Russian and European traditions. Her knowledge and appreciation of modern music and its demands on the artist deepened through further studies with Stockhausen and Ligeti in Germany and Paris, along with coaching with Boulez and John Cage. As a result, she has long been sought out by contemporary composers. She has premiered more than 100 new works, including many contemporary piano concerti. Some of these performances are captured on her Centrediscs CDs 3 Concerti and Eclipse and the upcoming Tapestries; and on Contemporary Piano Concerti (CBC Records).
Larysa Kuzmenko’s Piano Concerto (1995/6)performed by Petrowska Quilico on the 3 Concerti CD, with the Toronto Symphony conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste, was nominated for Classical Composition of the Year in the 2011 Juno Awards.
Petrowska Quilico is also closely associated with the music of Ann Southam, who died in 2010, and is intimately acquainted with the challenges, both virtuosic and intellectual, that the minimalist composer presented in her work. She has performed Southam’s cycles Rivers, Pond Life and (in March 2011) Glass Houses Revisited – and recorded all for Centrediscs.
Equally proficient in the standard repertoire, Petrowska Quilico imparts her knowledge at York University, as Professor of Piano and Musicology, Director of Classical Piano and a member of the Graduate Faculty. Her more than 27 recordings include CDs of Debussy and Messiaen, Chopin and Liszt, and art song and operatic aria recitals with her late husband, Metropolitan Opera baritone Louis Quilico.
Hailed by The New York Times for her “promethean talent” Petrowska Quilico won a concerto competition in New York at 14, and has since appeared on the recital stage at such prestigious halls as Carnegie, Alice Tully and Merkin. Concert tours have taken her, as a soloist and with baritone Louis Quilico, across four continents – to Taiwan, the Middle East, France, Germany, Greece and Ukraine, and throughout the U.S. and Canada. Her orchestral collaborations have ranged from most of Canada’s leading ensembles to the symphony orchestras of Greek Radio and Taipei.
Petrowska Quilico received the 2007 Friends of Canadian Music Award from the Canadian Music Centre and Canadian League of Composers, and was among those honoured for having helped raise the profile of Canadian music, at the CMC’s 50th anniversary celebration at the National Arts Centre in 2009. Invited to perform there, she played Ann Southam’s Glass Houses No. 5. In 2010, Petrowska Quilico and composer Constantine Caravassilis were jointly named the first winners of the 2010 Harry Freedman Recording Award, from the CMC’s Harry Freedman Fund.
More information on Christina Petrowska Quilico is available at the following websites:
"A century ago, women in most western countries
couldn't vote, and ladies weren't supposed to write music. A few
did anyway, and often had to wait decades for a fair hearing. Christina
Petrowska Quilico, the virtuoso pianist whose Northern Sirens Cd
two years ago featured works by Canadians such as Ann Southam and
Alexina Louie, casts her net further afield for this show, which
also includes music by Cecile Chaminade."
-Robert Everett-Green
Toronto Globe and Mail
PIERRE BOULEZ HONOURED FOR CONTEMPORARY COMPOSITION
"…Toronto pianist Christina
Petrowska Quilico opened the program with the Piano Sonata No. ,
(1946)…Highly cerebral and calling for a huge variety of articulations
from the pianist (which Petrowska Quilico certainly supplied), the
sonata also exploded with colour and energy."
- William Littler, Toronto Star
"An extraordinary talent."
--The New York Times
"An astonishing pianist."
--The Toronto Star
"Dynamic...Dramatic...Profiled expressiveness."
_Los Angeles Times
"Christina Petrowska is an established soloist
on the Canadian scene with a special interest in contemporary keyboard
music...But as more recent albums suggest, her interest stretches
back into the traditional keyboard repertory as well. A new Debussy
album finds her fingers making their way nimbly through 17 of the
French composer's best-known short pieces, while this contemporaneous
disc finds them performing a similar service for 15 pieces by Chopin
and Liszt."
--William Littler,
The Toronto Star
"What more can be said about this internationally
acclaimed Canadian artist who thrilled Winnipeg audiences at the
du Maurier New Music Festival? Renowned for her seamless technique
and interpretive clarity, Petrowska has given world and out-of-this-world
premieres of countless works, including one which debuted on Canadian
astronaut Steve MacLean's Space Shuttle Columbia flight...one of
contemporary music's hottest starts".
- Michael Matthews
Concert Curator
University of Winnipeg
Ann Summers International
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