The Solarek Piano Trio
This long established group has toured extensively through Britain and Europe and has given performances at London’s South Bank, St Johns Smith Square and St. David’s Hall, Cardiff. Their concerts are well known for their informative and entertaining introductions. Sparkling performances combined with a friendly convivial atmosphere send audiences home elated.
The trio regularly performs and gives masterclasses in Germany where they frequently introduce British composers like Alan Bush, Samuel Coleridge Taylor ,Rebecca Clarke and Frank Bridge.
In 2019 the trio started collaborating with the author Anna Beer, a Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford, whose 2016 celebration and exploration of the achievements of female composers through the centuries, ‘Sounds and Sweet Airs: the Forgotten Women of Classical Music’, was shortlisted for the RPS Creative Communication prize. Together with Anna the trio brings these previously neglected composers’ works to new audiences.
They recently have recorded works by Henriette Bosmans and have started a series of workshops and talks 'silent scores' with the aim of making the vast unheard repertoire by underrepresented women composers part of the curriculum for schools and colleges .
Marina Solarek studied violin in Mannheim and Hamburg and completed her studies in London with Prof Yfrah Neamen. She has performed regularly in Britain and abroad with the Feinstein Ensemble and the Baroque Ensemble Kontraste. She has given concerts at the South Bank and has made several broadcasts for Classic FM and BBC Radio 3. She has recently given the first performance of the Violin concerto by Henriette Bosmans with the Richmond Orchestra.
Marina was a member of the BBC Radio Orchestra in is now leading a busy freelance career, working with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, BBC Symphony Orchestra, West End Shows and for Film and Television. Marina leads the Richmond Orchestra and is Artisitc Director of the Youth Music Centre in North West London.Her experience in educational work include teaching at the Royal College Junior Department, Orchestral and Chamber music coaching and giving Masterclasses at the University of Belfast.
Diana Cooper is a winner of numerous awards including 1st Prize at the Brest Chopin Competition, 1st Prize at the Halina Czerny-Stefanská International Competition in Poznan (Poland) and 1st Prize at the Concurso Internacional de Piano de Vigo (Spain), Diana Cooper has been invited to perform in various venues and festivals in France and abroad, including the Nohant Chopin Festival, the Festival Chopin à Paris, the Salle Cortot, the Polish Embassy in Paris, the Ysaye Festival in Belgium, the Palacio de Congresos in Huesca (Spain), the Hrvatski dom Split in Croatia, the Kielce Filharmonia in Poland...
In 2023, she took part in the project Un été en France avec Gautier Capuçon, for which she perfomed solo and chamber music in open-air concerts across France.
She's been invited to perform in the French radio program Générations Jeunes Interprètes
on France Musique as well as in the television programme Fauteuils d'orchestre, broadcast on France 5.
Her activity has been enriched by solo appearances in Chopin's 1st concerto, Mozart's 20th
and 21st concertos, as well as Schumann's concerto performed in 2023 with the Orchestre des Lauréats du Conservatoire de Paris at the Cité de la Musique in Paris. Pre-selected in 2021 for the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, she was invited the following summer by Philippe Giusiano to take part in masterclasses in Katowice and concerts at the Chopin Manor in Duszniki, organised by the Chopin Foundation.
Born in France, Diana is currently settled in London, studying at the Royal College of
Music in London on an Artist Diploma programme in Norma Fisher's class. She formely studied at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP) and in the Ecole Normale de Musique with Rena Schereshevskaya. In 2022, she joined the new season of the Académie Musicale Philippe Jaroussky, perfecting her skills with Cédric Thiberghien.
Diana has recently recorded her first CD, featuring works by Haydn, Chopin and Ravel,
after winning 1st Prize in the Concours d'aide aux Jeunes Artistes organised by the Festival du Vexin.
Ellen Baumring-Gledhill, was the only cellist to reach the Strings Category Final of BBC Young Musician 2020 and in the same year she won Junior Guildhall’s Lutine Prize.
Recent concerto performances include the Lalo Cello Concerto with the Junior Guildhall Symphony Orchestra at Milton Court in March 2023 and with the Welwyn Garden City Orchestra in October 2023. She has given three performances of the Elgar Cello Concerto: with the Glyndebourne Tour Orchestra conducted by Ben Glassberg in March 2023 and with the Ernest Read Symphony Orchestra and North London Sinfonia the previous year.
In August 2023, Ellen was selected to take part in a residency at the Lake District Summer Music Festival, working with Guy Johnston and Melvyn Tan. In 2022, she gave the première of and recorded Tendril for solo cello by John Cooney, composed for the Royal Academy of Music’s 200 Pieces Bicentenary Project. Ellen is cellist of the Regency String Quartet, under the auspices of the Royal Academy of Music’s Frost Trust Advanced Specialist Strings Ensemble Training (ASSET) Scheme.
Ellen has been awarded a number of prizes for performance during her time at the Royal Academy of Music including the Sir John Barbirolli Memorial Prize, the Royal Academy of Music’s Historical Women’s Composer Prize and the Wolfe Wolfinsohn String Quartet Prize as well as the Katie Thomas Memorial Prize and the Rhoda Butt Award for her achievement and contribution to the Royal Academy of Music. She previously studied with her uncle Dr Oliver Gledhill at Junior Guildhall as the D’Addario Strings Cello Scholar and was awarded the Principal’s Prize at the end of her final year.
She has a recital at St Mary’s, Perivale in Spring 2024 and in summer will play the Dvořák Cello Concerto with the Deeside orchestra in Aberdeenshire.
