ZBYNEK MARUSKA
Czech Republic
Piano
Zbynek Maruska is a Cyprus-based Czech Pianist and pedagogue. He has graduated from Prague Academy of Music as a student of the renowned National Artist, Prof. František Rauch. His later musical development was strongly influenced by a scholarship, studying at P.I.Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow under the guidance of Prof. Yevgeny Mogilevsky and Elena Richter, a student of Heinrich Neuhaus. He graduated with a Postgraduate Degree in Piano Performance and later on he held a teaching position at the Prague and Pardubice Conservatory. He was also a piano professor at the Music Department of the University of Nicosia from 2005 to 2009. For almost two decades he has been teaching both privately in Cyprus and at International Master Classes in Tyn nad Vltavou, Czech Republic, during the summer, in order to impart his experience to the support and further promotion of the very best piano talents. His former students hold faculty positions in U.S., Czech Republic, Germany and England and have been winners in major National and International Piano Competitions. The last ten years he holds a piano teaching position at the public Music Lyceum in Cyprus. He is a constant member of the jury for the prestigious “Prague Junior Note”, a unique children's music competition in the Czech Republic, which has over twenty years of tradition.
Zbynek has performed solo and chamber music recitals throughout Europe. As a solo performer, he has given many recitals in his homeland, Russia, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Sweden and has appeared with most of the major Czech orchestras including the Prague Symphony Orchestra and the Pilsen Philharmonic Orchestra. As an avid chamber musician, he performed with the famous ensembles “Harmonia Mozartiana Pragensis” and the “Mozart Quintet Prague”. Zbynek has also formed the ‘Piano Duo’ with Elina Linchevskaya, giving recitals in Russia and Cyprus. Through the years he collaborated with many Cypriot musicians and premiered works by contemporary Cypriot composers. Among others in 1997/98 he premiered piano works by Arion John Kyrris using original -unpublished manuscripts, with the permission and encouragement of the composer. He also made numerous recordings and music programmes for the CYBC. In the last few years he has been supporting the mobility of the young Cypriot talents in classical music within the concert series “Young Cyprus Classic”.