News & press

Roberto Tibiriçá, Sao Paulo

I was honored to work with Marian Sobula in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in Sao Paulo. It was a beautiful experience. His touch is wonderful and brilliant technique. It was a great pleasure to make music together!

Gilberto PONCE, Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile, NESTEROWICZ – SOBULA SYMBIOSIS

The return of the conductor – winner of the first place at an international competition – and the performance by an eminent pianist gave the National Orchestra an impulse to further action…

(…) This was followed by a touching version of Frederic Chopin’s Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, with the solo part performed by an outstanding Polish pianist, Marian Sobula. One of the most striking aspects of the entire performance was the absolute unity of the soloist’s and conductor’s perspectives. In perfect symbiosis, the two musicians faced the attacks, breaths, and dynamic modulations.

This was of no small importance, as – besides the accelerando and the ritardando – the work requires changes of the tempo performed with utmost precision: from the introduction saturated with romanticism in the first part, to the appearance of the soloist, who – thanks to his extraordinary technique – was forming dialogues with the orchestra with absolute freedom of expression, which was proved by the cleanness of phrases and intentions.

The second part, marked with the oneiric sound of strings and interventions by woods, began with poetic suffering. Here, the soloist rejected the previous powerful sound to turn it into a winged pianissimo of equal expression. In this part, the artists perfectly carried out all the rhythmical ambiguities required by the composer. Besides the gracefulness invested by the artists, the closing rondo, more bucolic in its character, preserved the balance of the sound in each of its parts: a display of magnificent sounds produced by the orchestra and the utmost mastery of Sobula.

Faced with the visible signs of audience’s reverence, which went beyond applause, in the encore the pianist perfectly interpreted Frederic Chopin’s Etude in C Major, Prelude in D minor, and the Mazurka in G sharp minor.

Marian Sobula is a soloist we would like to listen to in the following season (…)