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Christina Petrowska

"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

Reviews

 “Christina Petrowska Quilico…exhibits enormous strength, stamina and an amazingly crisp, clean articulation.”   – Art Lange, Fanfare Magazine, reviewing Mystic Streams

“She has a remarkably luminous tone that draws the listener to the music in a way that not many pianists can manage.”  – American Record Guide, reviewing Northern Sirens

“Petrowska Quilico is …an excellent musician, technically skillful and interpretively sound. She knows her way through the thorny thickets of Messiaen, Boulez, and the other contemporary composers, delivering their strange rhythms and discords effectively. I’m particularly taken by hearing the eerie sounds of the Boulez sonata again.”  – American Record Guide, July/August 2003, reviewing Gems with an Edge

“The playing here is far more sensitive and responsive than anything I have heard.”– The Ottawa Citizen, Jacob Siskind, reviewing Debussy & Messiaen

3 Concerti (Piano concerti by Violet Archer, Larysa Kuzmenko and Alexina Louie – Centrediscs CMCCD 15610, 2010)

“I review another of Quilico’s Centrediscs releases in this issue (Ann Southam’s Pond Life), and what I wrote there about her attention to tonal color also applies here. These three concertos also allow her to show off her pianistic muscles, however, and she has plenty to show off. Her playing is as tough and assertive as the repertoire). This is a fine addition to her discography, and I hope we will continue to hear much more from this pianist-in both familiar and unfamiliar repertoire-in coming years. Recommended!” – Raymond Tuttle, Fanfare Magazine

“Christina Petrowska Quilico plays all of this music with vivid brio, always finding a lucid textural balance with the orchestra. Her rock-steady rhythmic pulse and palpable enthusiasm seem to beg the listener to pay attention to the music, as if to say that none of this deserves obscurity.” – Peter Burwasser, Fanfare Magazine 

“Pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico is the soloist on 3 Concerti, a disc which serves to remind us that there is a grand tradition of concerto writing in this country and begs the question – why are they so rarely played? Of the three, Louie’s is the most exotic…the work is a skilful and exuberant blending of East and West. Petrowska Quilico is in fine form with the National Arts Orchestra, under Alex Pauk….Kuzmenko is an unabashed Romantic whose model seems to be Rachmaninov, although here too I sense the influence of Bartok. The work is flamboyantly virtuosic and Petrowska Quilico takes full advantage of the opportunity to rise to the occasion. It is a well-crafted, dramatic work that would be well at home on any mainstream orchestral concert and, like others on this disc, deserves to be heard more often.” – David Olds, Whole Note/ Editors Corner

March 21, 2006

"The physical renaissance of Toronto culture isn't just happening downtown...a case in point is the Recital Hall in what is called Accolade East...Music department head Michael Coghlan's Accolade Fanfare for Five Trumpets blew the audience's hair backward in a suitably exuberant opening gesture. The evening ended with the world pemiere of Eclipse, a concerto for piano, 10 instruments and voice by York alumnus David Mott.

Written in three movements that weave into each other, and conducted by professor Mark Chambers, Eclipse was a showcase for considerable talents of Christina Petrowska Quilico at the piano...There was a buzz of anticipation in the scarlet-painted lobby before the gala began, and there were even wider smiles afterward".- John Terauds, Toronto Star

May 6, 2005

"I like Christina Petrowska Quilico's "go big or go home" attitude to the piano recital, and was particularly happy to hear that she is performing Ann Southam's complete Rivers cycle at the Music Gallery. Ot these 19 pieces of pattern music (often called minimalist), I knew only one - the exhilirating No. 8 from Set 3 - thanks to Quilico's own performances and recording of it.

Petrowska did an exceptionally beautiful job of the slow pieces, I thought, casting a spell with her quiet, bell-like sound. I also liked the strong, confident flow she gave not just to the fast pieces, but also the slow fast ones.

Quilico arranged then in groups that provided contrasts of tempos.

But during the last piece one felt, not a heroic sense of arrival or a sense of triumph over adversity, as one would in a traditional symphony, but a sense of piece in the journey itself. Although this last piece - the final one of the cycle, in fact - was the longest, I kept hoping it would never end.

Quilico's recording of Rivers, which includes a radio documentary on Southam, is available on the Centerdiscs label; (www.musiccentre.ca). -Tamara Bernstein, National Post

"Ms. Petrowska is a formidable force in the Canadian music scene…she is truly a gifted pianist…a beautiful work (Catbird Seat) and a beautiful performance.", greeted the release of a Trappist Recording of music by David Jaeger, by Jan Press Publications. In a feature article in Fanfare Record Magazine, Christina Petrowska Quilico was headlined as a "Renaissance woman...and a part-time lounge lizard".

November 24, 2002

"In presenting Pierre Boulez with the triennial $50,000 Glenn Gould Prize for service to music yesterday afternoon - appropriately enough in the CBC's Glenn Gould Studio - Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson bestowed the latest in a long list of awards recognizing the 77-year-old French musician's pre-eminence in contemporary musical life".

"...Toronto pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico opened the program with the first not needing one, the Piano Sonata No. 1 (1946), densely argued music written in the wake of Arnold Schoenberg and his abandonment of tonality. 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, Nov. 25, 2002

Award to Boulez Concert

(Left to right) Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico, composer Pierre Boulez, following the performance of Boulez's piano sonata.

Monday Magazine
November 25 – December 1, 1999
By Naomi Lester

New Canadian music - with some bite to it

Like Sundogs, this recording features a variety of composers and styles. The unifying element here is that they are all short piano pieces written by Canadian women composers and all played with easy expertise by Christina Petrowska. There are two pieces by Ann Southam, "Glass Houses" and "Rivers", written in a hypnotic minimalist vein. Larysa Kuzmenko's pieces, "Diabolic Dance" and "In Memoriam", are full of ten-sion and virtuosity, dark and biting in overall tone.

Also included are Diana Mcintosh's spacious "Worlds Apart" and Heather Schmidt's "Solus", which ranges from introspective to burst-ing with percussive immediacy - then trails away again to querying, coruscating upper notes. Alexina Louie's "Music for Piano", a five-piece suite, strikes a wonderful balance between an impressionistic, roman-tic quality and a muscular insistence in the melodies that does credit to Petrowska's command of touch. These are all pieces written by and for top-notch pianists, and take full advantage of the vast range of possibilities offered by the instrument.

Ann Summers International
43 Bright St.
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