The Moonlight Sonata

Sonata No. 4 in E-flat Major, Op. 7 “Grande Sonata”
Sonata No. 27 in e minor, Op. 90
Sonata No. 14, quasi una Fantasia, in c-sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2

Adam Golka, piano

Adam Golka

Since first performing Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas at the age of 18, Adam Golka has immersed himself in studying the great composer’s works under the guidance of masters such as Leon Fleisher, Alfred Brendel, Sir András Schiff, Murray Perahia, and Ferenc Rados. In 2011, Adam performed a cycle of all five Beethoven piano concerti with the Lubbock Symphony, his brother Tomasz at the baton, and last summer he made his San Francisco Symphony debut at the Stern Grove Festival playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. Adam celebrates Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020 by playing the whole cycle of Beethoven’s 32 sonatas in multiple cities. This tour coincides with a self-produced video series called 32@32 and the release of his first volume of Beethoven sonatas on First Hand Records. 

Adam has been on the concert stage since the age of sixteen, when he won first prize at the 2nd China Shanghai International Piano Competition and also received the Gilmore Young Artist Award and the Max I. Allen Classical Fellowship Award from the American Pianists Association.

Adam Golka’s solo appearances with orchestra have included the BBC Scottish, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Indianapolis, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Fort Worth, Vancouver, Seattle, and Jacksonville Symphonies; Grand Teton Festival Orchestra; National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa; the Sinfonia Varsovia; the Shanghai Philharmonic; the Warsaw Philharmonic; and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. He made his Carnegie Hall Isaac Stern Auditorium debut in 2010, performing Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 with the New York Youth Symphony.

Adam’s past appearances as a chamber musician include festivals such as Marlboro, Caramoor, Ravinia, Prussia Cove, Music@Menlo, and Frankly Music in Milwaukee, and he is also a member of the Manhattan Chamber Players. He has been presented by the Musicians Emergency Fund in Alice Tully Hall on multiple occasions and has performed recitals in the Concertgebouw’s Kleine Zaal, Musashino Civic Cultural Hall in Tokyo, and at festivals such as Mostly Mozart, the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, the Ravinia Festival, the New York City International Keyboard Festival, the Newport Music Festival, and the Hornby Island Festival in British Columbia. Adam is a frequent guest at the Krzyżowa-Music Festival in Poland, where he premiered his own two-piano arrangement of Debussy’s La Mer in 2018 and also narrated his original poetry for Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, created especially for the opening concert of the festival. 

Adam Golka’s debut album, featuring the first sonata of Brahms and the “Hammerklavier” sonata of Beethoven, was released in 2014 by First Hand Records. In 2017, he released his Schumann album for the same label, playing solo works and also partnering with soprano Lauren Eberwein.

Adam is greatly indebted to the late José Feghali, with whom he studied throughout all his teenage years and young adulthood, as well as Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory. He is Artist-in-Residence at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he teaches piano and chamber music and conducts the Holy Cross Chamber Orchestra.