Alicja Fiderkiewicz

Alicja Fiderkiewicz was born in Warsaw, Poland. She began to learn the piano at the age of seven; two years later she was accepted by the Central School of Music in the Moscow Conservatoire as a pupil of Professor Tatiana Kestner. Her studies continued in Warsaw with Professor Wanda Losakiewicz and Professor Zbigniew Drzewiecki, followed by tuition at the the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, by the Polish pianist Professor Ryszard Bakst. She graduated in the late 1970s with distinctions in both teaching and performing.

Miss Fiderkiewicz began to fulfil regular professional engagements when she was fifteen. In Poland her outstanding abilities were recognised with the award of a Chopin Scholarship in four consecutive years. She went on to give recitals throughout her native land, including several at Chopin's birthplace, Zelazowa Wola. Her début in the United Kingdom took place in 1972 at Manchester's Free Trade Hall.

She won first prize in the Dudley National Piano Concerto Competition followed by other awards: she was a prizewinner in the 1977 Premio Dino Ciani International Piano Competition at La Scala, Milan and, in 1979, proved to be the only pianist to be awarded the three year Calouste Gulbenkian Music Fellowship.

aving made her début in London's Wigmore Hall in 1975, in more recent years Miss Fiderkiewicz has performed extensively in Poland, Soviet Union, Italy, Switzerland, Israel, Spain, Japan, and Great Britain – including the Isle of Man. She has appeared as a soloist with the Manchester-based Hallé Orchestra, the Manchester Camerata, Da Camera, the Polish Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra, La Scala Theatre Orchestra, and numerous others. There have also been recordings for the BBC, both for radio and television.