Maria Sławek
Maria Sławek was born in Gdańsk in 1988, where she started to play the violin at the age of four years old. In 2011, she graduated with honors from the Academy of Music in Cracow where she studied violin with Wiesław Kwaśny. She honed her skills under the guidance of Dora Schwarzberg (postgraduate studies), Maxim Vengerov, Ivry Gitlis, Kolja Blacher and Wanda Wiłkomirska, among others. Maria Sławek is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Violin and Viola in the Academy of Music in Cracow. In 2015 she gained her PhD for thesis on Mieczysław Weinberg’s works for violin and piano.
She was supported by the Polish National Children’s Fund (2003-2006), and received scholarships from the “Sapere Auso” Foundation (2009) and the Ministry of Culture and National Hertiage (2010, 2013). In 2007 she was awarded with a Special Prize for Young Outstanding Polish Musicians, funded by late maestro Jerzy Katlewicz. Four years later she received an artistic scholarship from the City of Cracow, as well as the Solti Foundation award.
Maria Slawek is working intensively to increase her repertoire. Besides of her solo performances she continuously improves her chamber music skills and presents her sensibility and imagination to the audience by performing well-thought-out chamber music recitals with repertoire ranging from classical period to contemporary music of the present day.
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Rejoice Maria Sławek/Marcin Zdunik (2020)
Two people – that’s all it takes to carry on an interesting and inspiring conversation. Twoinstruments constitute also the smallest possible ensemble – the dialogue between them is inherently intimate and unique. This perception becomes even clearer, when a piece is being played by two string instruments, which – although differing in timbre – are inextricably intertwined. We had thought about recording a duet record for a long time, as we have been playing together for several years now, in various chamber formations – from a duet to a string sextet. (…) The pieces on this record have a special link: each of the composers whose works we have recorded, refer in a certain way to Johann Sebastian Bach. In the case of Eugène Ysayë, it is a direct, thematic reference to PartitaNo. 3 in E major and to polyphonic voices in the following movements: “Malinconia” and “Dance des ombres”. Krzysztof Penderecki’s Ciaccona corresponds with Bach not only through its form, but also through the reference to religious content expressed in the title. Sofia Gubaidulina is connected to the master from Leipzig through an openly expressed complete devotion to God (“in a sense, all my compositions can be summarised as sacred music”, says the composer in an interview given to Vera Lukomska), mystical content hidden in sounds, and fascination with perfect, mathematical order and proportions.
Maria Sławek
transl. Maria Borzobohata-Sawicka
