Hailed as “rapturous and glowing” by International Record Review and “an inspirational and devoted pianist” by Life & Arts – Financial Times, Polish-Canadian pianist Daniel Wnukowski has performed throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia in prestigious concert halls. He has performed with many orchestras, including the The Orchestra Now, Polish Radio Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Windsor Symphony, Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana, Sinfonia Iuventus, Poznan Philharmonic, Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic with conductors such as Leon Botstein, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Alain Trudel and David Amos. He has also performed in numerous International Festivals such as Chopin and His Europe in Warsaw, Poland; Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy; Chopiniana in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and the Pre-LSO Concert Series in London, UK.
This season he continues a focus on the music of Karol Rathaus, a Weimer-era composer whose music came to Mr. Wnukowski’s attention in 2016 through his work with Exil.Arte, a Vienna-based organization whose mission is to restore “degenerate” music. In February 2019, Mr. Wnukowski performs the composer’s Piano Concerto with The Orchestra Now conducted by Leon Botstein, as part of a Rathaus Festival presented by the Copland School of Music at Queens College, where Rathaus was on faculty; makes his Weill Hall recital debut in a program that includes the composer’s Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 20; and releases an all-Rathaus recording of solo piano music on the Toccata label. Mr. Wnukowski will also be featured in a documentary on Rathaus produced by Michael Haas.
Daniel Wnukowski inaugurated the 2017 year in Warsaw, Poland as a special guest at the National Philharmonic Hall, performing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” under the direction of Jerzy Maksymiuk. The concert was broadcast live on television and a commercial DVD recording was made available. On May 5 that year, he performed at the Austrian Parliament in remembrance of Holocaust victims targeted by Nazi Germany. This deeply, meaningful event was also broadcast live on Austrian television for ORF-2.
He was trained at the Lake Como International Piano Academy in Italy where he worked with distinguished artists such as Dmitri Bashkirov, Menahem Pressler, Claude Frank, Fou Ts’ong, John Perry and William Grant Naboré, at the Peabody Institute of Baltimore under the guidance of Leon Fleisher and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London with Graham Johnson and Ronan O’Hora.
Dedicated to giving back to the country that nurtured him as an artist, Wnukowski was recently awarded a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council to perform outreach concerts for remote, rural communities all throughout Canada together with five other pianists. Visit https://www.pianosix.com for more information. He is also founder and artistic director of the Collingwood Summer Music Festival.
