Maria Marchant
…the prodigiouosly gifted Maria Marchant.....another promising pianist of clean fingers and ambition.....Maria Marchant's unfussy, emotionally charged and superbly virtuosic playing caught Leighton's brand of fierce romantic mysticism.......the whole series ended with Kenneth Hesketh's Poetic Conceits which Marchant played with consummate mastery.’
The Classical Source, The Times and Musical Pointers reviewing Maria’s Southbank debut at the Purcell Room on 15th January 2010.
Maria Marchant began learning the piano at the age of seven with her grandmother, Kathy Barrett, and at the age of sixteen attended Junior Trinity where, coached by Philip Colman, she was twice awarded the Gladys Puttick Memorial Prize for Piano Performance. In 2003 she entered Trinity College of Music where she studied with Alexander Ardakov and Yonty Solomon. She won numerous awards and prizes including the John Longmire (Beethoven), Alfred Kitchin (Chopin), John Ireland, John Halford (Contemporary Music), Eric Falk Trust (Concerto Playing) and the Manager’s Discretionary Award in the Jaques Samuel Intercollegiate Piano Competition. Having graduated with First Class Honours and gaining the Silver Medal for Piano Performance, Maria was one of fourmusicians to be awarded the BBC Performing Arts Fund Education Bursary which funded her MMus in Advanced Piano Performance at The Royal College of Music. Studying with Niel Immelman, she was selected by the RCM as one of the 2009 'Rising Stars' and was awarded First Prize and Gold Medal in the International Hindemith Competition 2008 in Berlin and the RCM Hilda Anderson Deane Scholarship. She currently studies with Philip Fowke and has been selected as a young artist on the Concordia Foundation, Park Lane Group and Tillett Trust Schemes. Maria gave her Wigmore Hall debut on 27th September 2010 performing a programme of English Fantasies.
As a concerto soloist, Maria has wide experience, most recently performing Finzi's Eclogue, Grieg's Piano Concerto, Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto, Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto and the Paganini Rhapsody and Ravel's Left Hand Piano Concerto. She has performed in many venues such as the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall (RCM), Arundel Castle, Blackheath Concert Halls, Blüthner Piano Centre, Britten Theatre (RCM), Cadogan Hall, Cheltenham Town Hall, Duke's Hall (RAM), Fairfield Halls (Croydon), Konzerthaus (Berlin), National Gallery, Purcell Room (Southbank Centre), Royal Opera House, Steinway Hall, St. David's Hall (Cardiff), St. James's Piccadilly, St. John's Smith Square, St. Martin-in-the-Fields and Wigmore Hall.
A frequent recitalist, Maria has participated in a vast array of music festivals including the Cambridge Summer Music Festival, Cheltenham Music Festival, the 2008 and 2009 Proms Plus Series, RCM's Elliott Carter, Messiaen and 'Songs Without Words' Festivals and Trinity's New Quays, Schumann and Rzewski Festivals. A member of the BBC Symphony Chorus, she performed William Matthias' Shakespeare Songs with the BBC Symphony Chorus at the Teatro Leal in San Cristobel de Laguna last December.
British repertoire is of particular interest to Maria and she has participated in many masterclasses taken by renowned pianists such as William Aide, Leif Ove Andsnes, Peter Donohoe, Rolf Hind, Noriko Ogawa, Kathryn Stott and Melvyn Tan. Recent Tillett Trust engagements included performances in the Honiton, Ripley and Stratford-upon-Avon Festivals and her next Wigmore performance as part of the Park Lane Group Monday Platform Concert is next June 27th 2011 when she will perform works by Liszt, Poulenc and Prokofiev.
