Peter Jablonski

Peter Jablonski maintains a dual focus as a pianist, balancing traditional repertory with a deep engagement in contemporary music. He has both commissioned and performed new compositions while also pursuing activity as a conductor.

Born on February 25, 1971, in Lyckeby in far southeastern Sweden, he grew up with a Polish father and a Swedish mother. Jazz captured his attention early, leading him at age nine to play drums at New York’s Village Vanguard. He entered the Malmö Conservatory in 1982, where his studies encompassed piano, percussion, jazz, and classical performance. At twelve he made his Swedish debut in the classical sphere with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453.

In 1989 Jablonski relocated to London for training in piano, conducting, and composition at the Royal College of Music. Decca signed him in 1991, issuing his first album—a reading of Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy—and he remained with the label through the late 1990s.

For many years he concentrated on nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century works, especially Russian scores, producing complete cycles of the Prokofiev piano sonatas and the Tchaikovsky concertos. He has appeared in more than two thousand concerts and performed as soloist with over one hundred fifty orchestras. Japan has proven especially receptive; he has visited some twenty-five times. Although a recording hiatus lasted from 1997 to 2006, he issued several albums on Altara Records in the late 2000s. Western engagements have included the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, collaborating with conductors such as Andris Nelsons, Riccardo Chailly, and Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Contemporary music now occupies a larger share of his programs. He has collaborated with composers including Arvo Pärt and Witold Lutosławski and frequently introduces new scores. Among these are Wojciech Kilar’s Piano Concerto, which earned him the Orpheus Award for a new work at the Warsaw Autumn Festival, and Patrick Hawes’s Piano Concerto, which he premiered as dedicatee at the 2021 Enescu Festival in Bucharest, Romania.

He has also taken the podium on occasion, making his conducting debut in 2008 with the Sibelius Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39, leading the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2020 he joined the Ondine label and released the complete mazurkas of Scriabin; two years later he recorded the keyboard music of Grazyna Bacewicz. He serves as ambassador for the DONNE Foundation, which promotes the work of women in music.