With his four concertos for marimba, the Danish composer Anders Koppel (b.1947) has played a crucial role for the development of a concert repertoire for this distinctive instrument. His concertos have been performed by virtuoso percussionists all over the world, but for this premiere recording the composer has personally selected a quite special soloist, the young Polish marimba player Marianna Bednarska, who is thus making her CD debut – accompanied by the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Henrik Vagn Christensen.

Marianna Bednarska is a young Polish percussionist. She demonstrated her musical talent from her earliest years, and after graduating with merit from Henryk Mikolajczyk’s percussion class at the K Szymanowski Secondary Music School in Warsaw, she is now studying under Marta Klimasara at Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart.

20-year old Marianna Bednarska is already a well-recognized percussionist. She has won 19 first prizes in national and international percussion competitions, where she scored the highest marks from juries for outstanding musicality and technique. She was a finalist in the National Eurovision Competition 'Young Musician of the Year 2009'. As a soloist, Marianna Bednarska has played concerts in many prestigious concert halls in Poland and abroad with orchestras such as Sinfonia Varsovia, the Aalborg Symphonic Orchestra, the Lviv Philharmonic and the Polish Radio Orchestra in Warsaw.

In 2013 Marianna Bednarska was awarded the ‘Polish-Danish Friendship Prize’ for her close connection with Danish musical life, culminating in the CD recording of Anders Koppel’s four marimba concertos.

World premiere recordings of Concertos 2, 3 and 4.