Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 1 – Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

From September 2021, Marzena Diakun is Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Orquestra de la Comunidad de Madrid (ORCAM) and Chief Conductor of the Orchestre Symphonique de l’Opéra de Toulon. She came to international attention in 2016 following several concerts with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and is a former recipient of both the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Conducting Fellowship and a Taki Concordia Fellowship.

Recent engagements have taken Marzena to the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra Katowice, the Warsaw Philharmonic, Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias, Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orquestra Sinfónica do Estado de São Paulo, Deutsche-Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, the National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Lubljana, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and the Gothenburg Opera.

Marzena is a dedicated exponent of contemporary music and has given the first performances of numerous works with both Smash Ensemble (Spain) and the Berg Orchestra (Czech Republic). In 2016, she gave the Polish premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s opera Lost Highway and has worked with both Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Amsterdam-based Asko-Schönberg. Among the soloists she has collaborated are Martin Grubinger, Peter Jablonski, Andreas Staier, Ewa Kupiec, Truls Mørk, Daniel Müller-Schott, Camilla Nylund, Klaus Florian Vogt, Catherine Wyn-Rogers and Nathalie Stutzmann.

Marzena studied conducting under Mieczysław Gawronski at the Karol Lipinski Academy of Music in Wrocław and completed postgraduate studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She has been mentored by conductors including Kurt Masur, Andrey Boreyko and Pierre Boulez and has been a finalist in the Lutosławski Conducting Competition and a semi-finalist in both the Donatella Flick Conductors Competition in London and Quadaques Competition in Barcelona. She is currently a conducting professor at the Karol Lipinski Academy of Music in Wrocław.

Marzena has received the Kreatywni Wrocławia award and in 2015 was nominated for the Wrocław Music Award. She was named Artist of the Year in 2013 and was awarded the Koszalin Eagle award.

“A performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times), pianist Marc-André Hamelin is known worldwide for his unrivaled blend of consummate musicianship and brilliant technique in the great works of the established repertoire, as well as for his intrepid exploration of the rarities of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. He regularly performs around the globe with the leading orchestras and conductors of our time and gives recitals at major concert venues and festivals worldwide.

Highlights of Mr. Hamelin’s 2022–2023 season included a vast variety of repertoire performed with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall (Piano Quintet’s by Florence Price and Brahms), Berlin Philharmonic and Marek Janowski (Reger’s Piano Concerto), San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare (Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2), Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Gustavo Gimeno (Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie), Netherlands Philharmonic and Joshua Weilerstein (Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue), and Symphony Nova Scotia and Holly Mathieson (Grieg’s Piano Concerto). Recital appearances take Mr. Hamelin to Vienna, Chicago, Toronto, Montréal, Napa Valley, São Paulo, and Bogotá, among other venues across the world.

Mr. Hamelin is an exclusive recording artist for Hyperion Records, where his discography spans more than 70 albums, with notable recordings of a broad range of solo, orchestral, and chamber repertoire. In January 2022, the label released a two-disc set of C. P. E. Bach’s sonatas and rondos that received wide critical acclaim and in June 2022, Hyperion released the two-disc set of William Bolcom’s The Complete Rags.

Mr. Hamelin has composed music throughout his career, with over 30 compositions to his name. Most of those works—including the Etudes and Toccata on L’homme armé, commissioned by the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition—are published by Edition Peters. His most recent work, his Piano Quintet, was premiered in August 2022 by himself and the celebrated Dover Quartet at La Jolla Music Society.

Mr. Hamelin makes his home in the Boston area with his wife, Cathy Fuller, a producer, and host at Classical WCRB. Born in Montreal, he is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the German Record Critics’ Association and has received seven Juno Awards and 11 Grammy nominations, and the 2018 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. In December 2020, he was awarded the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Keyboard Artistry from the Ontario Arts Foundation. Mr. Hamelin is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Québec, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada.