Maria Welna
Email: management@mariawelna.com
Phone: 0433 309 707
Suburb: Lugarno / Miranda / Sydney CBD (travelling within the Southern Sydney and CBD areas)
Postcode: 2210 / 2228 / 2000
Extensive experience in choral, vocal (opera) and instrumental accompaniment. Media broadcasts, premiers of new works and recordings..
Specialities: Strings, Winds, Brass, Piano, Orchestral, Vocal, Choral, Opera Repetiteur, Organ, Eisteddfods, Exams, Auditions, Concerts, Recordings / Broadcasts
Maria is a concert pianist, concert organist, soprano and composer described by the press as a “born performer”, “virtuoso” and “amazing talent” with an “irrepressible style”. As a soloist, she performs “some of the world’s most stunning repertoire”. Her compositions have also received accolades and awards. Maria has performed across a range of fine venues (concert halls and cathedrals) in Australia, Europe, USA. She has repeatedly played for many dignitaries and honourable guests, receiving numerous commendations. Maria’s performance activity has appeared in a broad range of local, state, national and international newspapers/other media outlets with interviews, performances and compositions also broadcast on local, state and national radio (ABC Classic FM’s ‘Musica Viva Festival’ coverage, 4MBS Classic FM, SBS and Bay FM). From a young age, she has accumulated a vast array of awards and achievements at state, national and international levels including several Australian piano competition wins. Additional successes include the set up of a recital series, two CD’s, many other recordings, major performance projects and several years of musical directorship/performance positions in Krakow, Perth and Sydney.
Maria is widely involved in chamber music, performance practice and instrumental education. She has amassed 15 years of elite level performance experience and over 9 years of experience in instrumental pedagogy (the latter all as a tertiary degree qualified performer and instrumental teacher). Maria has premiered new and rare works, performed many notable two-piano, ensemble and collaborative works (choral, instrumental, lieder, opera), participated in collaborations/recording projects of song cycles (for example including works by Liszt, Ravel, Bartok, Schoenberg), and transcribed/performed orchestral settings in the style of historical concert virtuosos.
Maria grew up in Perth and is now based in Sydney. She has worked (as part of long-term studies, master-classes, festivals and other forms of collaboration) with a plethora of concert artists and professors (solo as well as chamber music specialists) from the USA, Australia, Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Switzerland, Iceland and Germany. She received her Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance (with additional programs in pipe organ and voice) from the K. Szymanowski Music Academy in Katowice, Poland. She also completed a Master of Music Studies degree in performance (pipe organ) at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Her performance practice expertise has been disseminated through the presentation of guest lectures, lecture-recitals, papers (at prestigious international conferences in Europe, at national conferences and in tertiary institutions) and adjudicator roles. Maria has completed performance practice fieldwork on historical keyboard instruments in Europe and Australia, with a particular focus on nineteenth-century developments. She has been widely involved in piano and organ performance practice specialising in the phenomenon of the ‘concert virtuoso’ and the implementation of lost performing practices.