Spring Salon
Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas
Adam Golka, piano
POSTPONED
Beethoven revolutionized the piano with his 32 masterful sonatas, and pianist Adam Golka is dauntingly performing the complete cycle around the country during the 20-21 season. For our spring salon, Adam will play several of Beethoven’s most beloved and important works at a private home, including the “Moonlight” and “Appassionata” sonata, to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday in style.
About the artist
Adam Golka
Polish-American pianist Adam Golka has been regularly on the concert stage since the age of sixteen, when he won first prize at the 2nd China Shanghai International Piano Competition. He has also received the Gilmore Young Artist Award and the Max I. Allen Classical Fellowship Award from the American Pianists Association, and was presented by Sir András Schiff in recitals at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr in Germany, Tonhalle Zürich, and in Berlin and New York.
Recent highlights include the Mozart Concerto No. 24, K. 491 with the NFM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra in Wroclaw,Poland; Mozart No. 21, K. 467 with JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic; Grieg’s Concerto with Symphony in C in New Jersey, and the Stravinsky Concerto for Two Pianos with pianist Roman Rabinovich in Tel-Aviv. Adam was presented on the Virtuosos Series by the Cliburn Foundation in Dallas, where he continues annual performances of his special education program: “Van Cliburn: An American Hero.” He made his San Francisco Symphony debut last summer in Beethoven Piano Cto. No. 4, when he also returned to the Krzyzowa Festival in Poland, a favorite destination of his, where he premiered his own two-piano arrangement of Debussy’s La Mer, and narrated – in Polish, English, and German – Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals with his own poetry written especially for the opening concert of the Festival.
In concertos ranging from Mozart and Beethoven to Tchaikovsky, Ravel, and Rachmaninov, Golka has appeared as soloist with the BBC Scottish, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Indianapolis, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Phoenix, San Diego, Fort Worth, Vancouver, Seattle, and Jacksonville Symphonies, Grand Teton Festival Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa, the Sinfonia Varsovia, the Shanghai Philharmonic, the Warsaw Philharmonic, and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. In 2011 he performed a cycle of all five Beethoven concerti with the Lubbock Symphony, under the baton of his brother, Tomasz Golka.
An avid chamber musician, Adam has participated in the Marlboro and Prussia Cove Music Festivals, Music @Menlo, Caramoor, with the Orpheus Chamber Players, and in regular appearances at Frankly Music in Milwaukee, as well as touring with the Manhattan Chamber Players.
In recital, Adam Golka has appeared at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York; in the Mostly Mozart Festival in David Geffen Hall; Concertgebouw’s Kleine Zaal, and Musashino Civic Cultural Hall in Tokyo; and at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, the Ravinia Festival, the New York City International Keyboard Festival at Mannes, the Newport Music Festival and the Duszniki Chopin festival. He has premiered solo works written for him by Richard Danielpour, Michael Brown and Jarosław Gołembiowski. Golka’s début disc, featuring the first sonata of Brahms and the Hammerklavier Sonata of Beethoven, was released in 2014 by First Hand Records.
In celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020, Adam is playing all 32 of Beethoven’s Sonatas in performance, in tandem with his next recordings for First Hand Records, which will release Adam’s complete Beethoven Sonatas.
Adam studied with the late José Feghali, and spent four years at the Peabody Conservatory studying with Leon Fleisher. Since finishing his official studies, he has continued his work with great musicians such as András Schiff, Alfred Brendel, Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, Ferenc Rados, and Rita Wagner.
Adam Golka acts as Artist-in-Residence at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he teaches piano, chamber music, and conducts the Holy Cross Chamber Orchestra.
Program
To be announced.
