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 attended Junior Trinity after learning piano with her grandmother, Kathy Barrett, and entered Trinity College of Music in 2003 where she won numerous awards and prizes including the Eric Falk Trust (Concerto Playing), John Halford (Contemporary Music), John Ireland, Alfred Kitchin (Chopin) and the John Longmire (Beethoven).   Having graduated with First Class Honours and gaining the Silver Medal for Piano Performance, Maria was one of four musicians to be awarded the BBC Performing Arts Fund Education Bursary which funded her MMus in Advanced Piano Performance at the Royal College of Music.   She was also 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.  Maria has studied with many professors including Philip Colman, Philip Fowke, Niel Immelman and Yonty Solomon and has been selected as a young artist on three schemes: the Concordia Foundation, Park Lane Group and the Tillett Trust.  Maria gave her Wigmore Hall debut on 27th September 2010 performing a programme of English Fantasies and returned last June to perform a programme of Liszt, Poulenc and Prokofiev.

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.  Maria has performed in many masterclasses taken by renowned pianists such as William Aide, Leif Ove Andsnes, Rolf Hind, Noriko Ogawa, Kathryn Stott and Melvyn Tan. 

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 TCM's New Quays, Schumann and Rzewski Festivals.  A member of the BBC Symphony Chorus, she performed as pianist in William Matthias' Shakespeare Songs with the BBC Symphony Chorus at the Teatro Leal in San Cristobel de Laguna in December 2009 and has recently performed as pianist in the recording of works by Jonathan Dove, Gordon Grosse and John Joubert with the BBC Symphony Chorus for broadcast on Radio 3 on Sunday 18th September 2011 at 5pm on 'The Choir'. 

British repertoire is of particular interest to Maria and she gave her Southbank debut in January 2010, performing works by Kenneth Leighton and Kenneth Hesketh in the Purcell Room as part of the Park Lane Group Young Artist New Year Series.  Recent engagements include performances in the Honiton, Ripley and Stratford-upon-Avon Festivals.

For a recent review of Maria's performance in the King's Lynn Festival 2011, please click on the following link:

http://www.lynnnews.co.uk/lifestyle/lifestyle-and-leisure-news/festival_review_maria_marchant_1_2920588