Ewa Kupiec | Concert Pianist & Professor of Piano
About
Ewa Kupiec was born in Duszniki-Zdrój, Poland. From 1976 to 1983, she attended the Karol Szymanowski Music School in Katowice, where she studied piano with Monika Sikorska-Wojtacha. She later continued her education at the Academy of Music in Katowice and at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, studying with Regina Smendzianka, before completing further studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Nelly Akopian.
Kupiec came to international attention after winning the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in 1992 in the piano-and-cello duo category. Since then, she has appeared with major orchestras throughout Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia, including the Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Royal Danish Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and São Paulo Symphony Orchestra.
She has collaborated with conductors including Herbert Blomstedt, Sakari Oramo, Marin Alsop, Semyon Bychkov, Neeme Järvi, Marek Janowski, Ingo Metzmacher, Xian Zhang, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Krzysztof Penderecki, Andrey Boreyko, Gilbert Varga and Stanisław Skrowaczewski, with whom she recorded Chopin's two piano concertos in 2003. Chamber partners include Isabelle Faust, Johannes Moser and the Petersen Quartet.
Polish music is central to her work: she has performed and recorded Szymanowski, Paderewski, Bacewicz, Panufnik, Szpilman and Chopin. Her Szymanowski recording received an ECHO Klassik award in 1997, and her Sony recording of music by Władysław Szpilman gained wide attention in connection with Roman Polański's film The Pianist. In 2005 she performed Alfred Schnittke's First Piano Concerto at the Konzerthaus Berlin.
Since 2011 Ewa Kupiec has been Professor of Piano at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. She gives masterclasses internationally and has served on the juries of the ARD International Music Competition, the Sydney International Piano Competition, the Busoni Competition, the International Beethoven Competition in Bonn and the Maj Lind Competition. In 2018 she was elected a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
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