A real gift for Pažaislis Music Festival audiences will be the performance of Jan Krzysztof Broja, one of the most outstanding Polish pianists. Already after his debut at the Warsaw National Philharmonic, he has been compared by critics to the most famous pianists of the last century, and in 2009 he was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Born in Warsaw, he studied in Frankfurt am Main, Hanover and Warsaw, and has been a prize-winner of numerous international piano competitions. After his memorable victory at the 1999 Mikolas Konstantinas Čiurlionis Piano Competition in Vilnius, J.K. Broja was dubbed “the pianist of the 21st century” by the Lithuanian press, opening the door to prestigious venues in Europe, Asia and America. He has given numerous recitals, performed at many international piano festivals, and his performances have been recorded by radio and television stations in Poland, Spain, Germany, Great Britain, France, Japan, Colombia, Brazil and the United States.
Broja collaborated with the world-renowned director Roman Polanski on the film The Pianist, as a personal music consultant to the lead actor Adrien Brody. He played the piano part in Pawel Mykietyn’s soundtrack for Andrzej Wajda’s Sweet Rush, and four years ago he was heard in cinemas all over the world on the soundtrack of Šarūnas Bartas’s film Frost. J.K. Broja’s CDs are available on record labels such as Naxos and ICA Classics.

The pianist says of his relationship with music: “To be a musician, a composer, an improviser, and to be passionless is simply an impossible combination that is immediately doomed to failure”. It is not surprising, then, that the programme chosen by Broja for the Pažaislis Festival will feature two of Ludwig van Beethoven’s last three sonatas. The 30th seduces the listener with its intimate, less dramatic character and is distinguished by its extraordinary lyricism, melodic and harmonic embellishments, ornaments and virages reminiscent of the works of Fryderyk Chopin. The 31st is characterised by a huge emotional spectrum: from the depths of utter despair to complete euphoria. This sonata is incredibly compact, and its philosophical opening is like a thesis statement that permeates the whole sonata and reaches its apotheosis in the final moments. The two magnificent works by the Viennese classicist will be separated by the romantic piano miniatures by Johannes Brahms: the lyrical Intermezzo and the epic Rhapsody, radiant with expressive power.