Tamara Granat (DUO GRANAT)


Graduated with honours from the Music High School in Wroclaw in the piano class of Janina Butor. As a 16 year old student, she won the 1st Grade Artistic Chopin Scholarship during a musical competition organized by the F. Chopin Institute in Warsaw (1979).

 

In the years 1982-1987 she studied at the Academy of Music in Gdansk in prof. Jerzy Sulikowski’s piano class and prof. Roman Suchecki’s chamber class. She also took part in the summer master courses under prof. Victor Mierzanov and Tatiana Szebanowa (Moscow). She is also a laureate of the Paderewski Piano Competition in Bydgoszcz (1987). In the same year she debuted by performing the A-Major Concerto by Liszt with the Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra and Jerzy Maksymiuk.

 

For 25 years she performed, alongside Waldemar Malicki, in a piano duet for four hands and two pianos. They recorded 6 CDs and gave numerous recordings for the Polish Radio and TV. The duet performed in many European countries, in the USA (Kennedy Center, Washington DC 1991; Lincoln Center, New York 2005), in Russia (International Piano Duet Competition, Yekaterinburg 1991). Duo Granat also gave concerts in the Polish National Philharmonic in 1996 and 2001. In 1998, Tamara Granat and Waldemar Malicki were invited to perform at the inauguration of the Jerzy Buzek Foundation. The duet made several recordings with the National Radio Orchestra in Katowice, including Mozart’s E flat major Concerto for two pianos as well as XX Century Concertos conducted by W. Michniewski and Kai Baumann. The duet’s Bach Piano Concertos album, recorded with the Prima Vista Quartet, received the most prestigious Polish music award (Fryderyk 2000). Their recordings of Paderewski received a nomination for the prize in the following year.

 

As a chamber musician, Tamara Granat has been cooperating with the Chamber Philharmonia in Kuwait. She performed alongside Tomasz Strahl (cello), Konstanty Andrzej Kulka (violin), Alicja Wegorzewska (soprano), Aviva Lacterman (soprano), Vadim Brodski (violin) and Per Hammastrom (violin). In 1999, she gave a tournee around Indonesia, while at the same time giving piano courses in Jakarta. In 2001, she worked with the string quartet Camerata and gave concerts in Zagreb and Sarajevo. In the years 1998-2002, she regularly took part in the chamber music festival Bravo Maestro in Poland.

 

In 2009 she began working with Daniel Propper – an outstanding Swedish pianist living in France.  Recorded in September, the album entitled “French Music for Piano Duo” is the first result of this cooperation. The CD was noticed by the British radio station Classic FM, and extracts of it have been played on numerous occasions. The album received excellent reviews in the Polish magazine HiFi. Duo Granat is planning recording two other albums – with Polish and Latin-American music.

 

Discography:

 

  • Dances for 4 hands (DUX 0202)
  • Duo Granat – Recital (DUX 0224)
  • Saint-Saens – Carnival of the Animals (Polskie Radio PRCD 101)
  • Chopin – Music for 4 hands (PONY CANYON)
  • J. S. Bach – Piano Concertos with Prima Vista Quartet (DUX 0188) Fryderyk 2000
  • I. J. Paderewski – Pieces for 2 and 4 hands (DUX 0328a) Fryderyk 2001 nomination
  • French Music for Piano Duo – Tamara Granat & Daniel Propper (DUX 0739)