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The Viennese Carnival
MARTINA FILJAK, piano
R. Schumann, J. S. Bach, C. Franck
The pianist Martina Filjak is one of the most talented Croatian musicians of the younger generation. Martina wins the heart of audience around Europe and worldwide with a passionate and lyric interpretation and technical perfection. The artist of a ‘galvanising power’ with a ‘magnetic stage presence’ has attracted the attention of the wider audience in 2009 when she won the Gold Medal and a number of special awards at the renowned international competition in Cleveland, U.S.A., after which she soon debuted in Berlin Konzerthaus and New York Carnegie Hall. Prior to the U.S. award, Martina Filjak had won numerous prizes in Europe and her native Croatia. This exceptional musician, who cultivates a broad repertoire, from Bach to Berio, was born into a family of musicians. She started taking piano lessons at the age of 5 and appeared publicly for the first time when she was 6. She was educated in Zagreb (Music Academy), Vienna (Vienna Conservatory) and Hannover. She attended master classes at the prestigious Piano Academy at the Como Lake in Italy. Besides the soloist career, Martina Filjak devotes great attention to chamber music. In Zadar, she appeared as soloist and with the Zadar Chamber Orchestra. After a longer pause, she returns to Zadar Concert Season to present a programme that centres appropriately, given the month of February, on the Carnival of Vienna, Op. 26, by Robert Schumann, while the works of the two other composers, Johann Sebastian Bach and César Franck, will fill in the thematic jigsaw puzzle of the carnival programmatic concept.