Professor Maja Nosowska

I began to learn the piano when I was four. I com­pleted all three steps of my music edu­ca­tion and grad­u­ated from the State Col­lege of Music in War­saw as Mas­ter of Fine Arts in the class run by Pro­fes­sor Natalia Hornowska and Jerzy March­wiński. I then con­tin­ued to improve my piano skills under Pro­fes­sor Tatiana Niko­layeva at the P. Tchaikovsky Con­ser­va­tory in Moscow and also under Guido Agosti, Ricard Bren­golo and Alain Meu­nier at Accad­e­mia Chi­giana in Sienna.

Already as a fresh­man at the War­saw Col­lege of Music I began to take inter­est in cham­ber music to which I have devoted my entire pro­fes­sional life, both as a per­former and as a teacher. I won a prize at the First Inter­na­tional Con­tem­po­rary Music Com­pe­ti­tion in Utrecht in 1968 where I played with a vio­lin­ist, I was given a con­grat­u­lat­ing let­ter by the jury of a com­pe­ti­tion in Vienne in 1969 when I accom­pa­nied a singer, and then I was given many more diplo­mas and awards for this type of activ­ity at other national and inter­na­tional competitions.

Since then I have been per­form­ing very actively all over Europe, in the USA and Cuba, where my part­ners have been such out­stand­ing musi­cians as Kaja Danc­zowska, Jad­wiga Rappé, Oleg Krys, Ivan Monighetti, Milos Sadlo, Michael Flaks­man, Jean Fournier, Wolf­gang Marscher and many, many others.

I play many forms of cham­ber music and many styl­is­tic gen­res. In 1971 Bar­bara Hal­ska and I set up the War­saw Piano Duet and in 1974 Kaja Danc­zowska, Tadeusz Woj­ciechowski and I formed a trio. I have also co-operated in the role of harp­si­chord player with sev­eral Pol­ish cham­ber orches­tras: T. Ochlewski’s, K. Teutsch’s and J. Maksymiuk’s. I have made a num­ber of record and radio-television record­ings for Pol­ish Radio and Tele­vi­sion and many Euro­pean broad­cast­ing houses. I feel a spe­cial affin­ity to the music of Schu­bert, Brahms and Szy­manowski but I also like French music very much.

Another form of activity

My real pas­sion is teach­ing which occu­pies just as much room in my life as per­form­ing and record­ing. I have been work­ing for many years at the Fred­eric Chopin Acad­emy of Music where I lead a cham­ber music class. For sev­eral years now I have also been teach­ing cham­ber music at the F. Chopin Sec­ondary Music School in War­saw. I am espe­cially ded­i­cated to the artis­tic song. I have also con­ducted mas­ter courses in Poland and abroad: at State Cal­i­for­nia Uni­ver­sity Fresno, Nord Hol­land Fes­ti­val Alk­maar, Accad­e­mia Tranese. Just recently I have coached singers and pianists at a course at Epsom Col­lege (Eng­land) at the Colla Voce Sum­mer School.

I am inter­ested in var­i­ous sys­tems of music edu­ca­tion through­out the world and whether or not they can be trans­ferred to our con­di­tions here at home. In par­tic­u­lar, I am look­ing closely at the appro­pri­ate and con­scious use of the body in singing and play­ing musi­cal instru­ments as well as in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of artis­tic ideas.

My deep con­cern for the need to keep this “instru­ment”, i.e., the human body, in good order has led me to estab­lish the Saint Cecilia — Health for Musi­cians Foun­da­tion. The main pur­pose of this foun­da­tion is to bring to pro­fes­sional musi­cians the aware­ness that they must con­tin­u­ally care for their own psycho-physical fit­ness and that of their stu­dents (pro­fes­sional pre­ven­tion) and I even­tu­ally plan to develop a reha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre for musicians.

When I am not work­ing I like best to walk in the moun­tains, the woods or the coun­try­side … and go to the cinema.

e-mail: nosek@chopin.edu.pl

Pro­fes­sor Maja Nosowska