Early life Fialkowska was born in
Montreal, Quebec, to a Canadian mother (Bridget Todd Fialkowski) and a Polish father (Jerzy Fialkowski), an engineer and Polish army officer who
emigrated to Canada in 1945. Her mother, of Scottish-Irish and
Cree descent, studied piano, in a class setting, with
Alfred Cortot at the
École Normale de Musique de Paris (1935–1939). Fialkowska is the granddaughter of
John Todd, Canada's first professor of
parasitology, and great-granddaughter of
Edward Clouston, President of the
Canadian Bankers Association. She is the cousin of former Canadian cabinet minister
David Anderson and cousin of stage and screen actor
Christopher Plummer. Fialkowska began to study piano at the age of four with her mother and in 1960 enrolled in the
École Vincent-d'Indy in Montreal. In 1963, at the age of 12, she made her debut as a soloist with the
Montreal Symphony Orchestra and began studying with
Yvonne Hubert. She pursued her secondary education at the Montreal girls school
The Study, graduating in 1967. The following year, at the age of 17, she simultaneously obtained undergraduate (
Baccalauréat) and
Maitrise degrees from the
Université de Montréal. During this period, she also studied in Paris with virtuoso and teacher
Yvonne Lefébure (1966, 1968–1969). In 1969 she was awarded 1st Prize in the
CBC National Radio Competition for Young Performers in Canada and travelled occasionally to New York City for private studies with Sasha Gorodnitzki. In 1970, she settled in New York and enrolled in the
Juilliard School of Music as a student of
Sascha Gorodnitzki, later becoming his teaching assistant from 1979 to 1984. In 1974, while enrolled in law school in Montreal, Fialkowska participated in the inaugural
Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in
Tel Aviv. Unbeknownst to her, one of the judges gave her a zero in order to help his own student advance. But
Rubinstein himself, then 87, was impressed by her playing. When he found out about the zero, he threatened to withdraw his name from the competition unless Fialkowska advanced.
Rubinstein became her mentor and launched her international career, hailing her as "a born
Chopin interpreter."
Professional career In 1986, to commemorate the centennial of the death of
Franz Liszt, Fialkowska was invited to perform his complete Transcendental Études in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, in London for the BBC, and in Canada for the CBC. In 1990, she was chosen to perform, with the Chicago Symphony, the world premiere of the recently discovered
Third Piano Concerto of Franz Liszt. Fialkowska has also given world premiere performances of piano concertos by American composer
Libby Larsen, with the
Minnesota Orchestra (1991) and by Canadian composer
Marjan Mozetich, with the
Kingston Symphony (2000). In 1992, the
Colorado Symphony invited her to perform the North American premiere of the piano concerto by Sir
Andrzej Panufnik. Also in 1992, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation produced a television documentary of her life and career, entitled
The World of Janina Fialkowska, which was aired across Canada and was awarded a special jury prize at the San Francisco International Film Festival. In January 2002, on the eve of a European concert tour, Fialkowska's career was interrupted by the discovery of an aggressive cancerous tumour in her upper left arm. Following the removal of the malignant mass in May 2002, she subsequently underwent an innovative surgical procedure designed to reconstruct the arm that had been rendered almost useless by the excision of the tumour. During her eighteen months of convalescence, she gave many concerts in Europe and North America, performing music written especially for the left hand by
Ravel (
Concerto for the Left Hand) and
Prokofiev (
Piano Concerto no. 4), which she adapted for performance with the right hand. Both the public and the critics praised her courage and the high calibre of these performances such as with the Houston Symphony Orchestra under Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. In 2004, Fialkowska returned to the stage as a two-handed pianist, first with a recital in Germany, followed by Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto in Toronto. Since then, she has resumed active touring in Canada, the United States, Europe, and the Far East performing amongst others with the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the Suk Chamber Orchestra Prague, the Vancouver Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mexico State Orchestra, L'orchestra di Camera Italiana, the Badische Staatskapelle, the Osaka Philharmonic and many others. In the summer of 2010, Fialkowska hosted a celebration of the works of
Chopin at the
Festival of the Sound. In 2018, her album
Chopin Recital 3 won a Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year. Fialkowska has also garnered praise for her interpretations of the works of
Chopin and
Liszt. ==Personal life==