Pianist Ewa Pobłocka was one of the first musicians in her native Poland to go abroad for training during the Communist era, and she has enjoyed an international career as a concerto soloist and recitalist. She has also been a significant figure as a teacher. Pobłocka was born on November 21, 1957, in the town of Chełmno in northern Poland. After starting piano lessons at age five, Pobłocka began at 12 to accompany her mother, singer and teacher Zofia Janukowicz-Pobłocka, in concert. Pobłocka attended secondary school and then university at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Gdánsk, studying with Jerzy Sulikowski, among others, and graduating with honors in 1981. During the last part of this period, she also studied in Hamburg, Germany, under the supervision of Conrad Hansen. She also took master classes with Martha Argerich, among others. A major breakthrough for Pobłocka came in 1980 when she won fifth prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, a prestigious event held only once every five years. Her concert career blossomed after that, not only in Poland, where she has appeared with all the country's major orchestras but abroad, even before the fall of Communism. Pobłocka has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the English Chamber Orchestra, among other Western stalwarts. As a recitalist, she has appeared at top venues, including New York's Lincoln Center, London's Wigmore Hall, and the Herkules-Saal in Munich. In 1990, Pobłocka gave the Polish premiere of the Piano Concerto by expatriate composer Andrzej Panufnik at the International Festival of Contemporary Music, and she followed that up by recording the work with the London Symphony Orchestra under the composer's direction. She has also specialized in the Piano Concerto of Witold Lutosławski, recording it several times, including once under the composer's baton with the Polish Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra in Katowice in 1995 and performing it at the UNESCO 50th anniversary celebration in Paris. Many of her recordings have focused on Romantic repertory, including a series of Chopin recordings for the Fryderyk Chopin Institute. Her association with this label has also produced recordings of the nocturnes of John Field and, in 2019, of Book One of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846-869. In 2023, she returned with Book Two (BWV 870-893). By that time, her recording catalog comprised more than 20 items. Since 2007, Pobłocka has been a full professor of music at the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, and she has also served as associate professor at the Chopin Academy in Warsaw. ~ James Manheim, Rovi