Maya Kasprzak

Maya Alexandra Kasprzak, born on October 7, 2005 in Hanover, comes from a Polish-Japanese family of musicians. She received her first violin lessons at the age of 4, first with Julita Smolen and later with her father, Wienczyslaw Kasprzak. From 2017 to 2022, she was a junior student of Prof. Latica Honda-Rosenberg at the Berlin University of the Arts. Since 2022, she has been studying at the Leipzig University of Music and Performing Arts in the class of Prof. Tobias Feldmann, initially in the pre-collage class and since October 2023 in the regular course of study.

Maya receives valuable artistic inspiration in various master classes, including with Prof. Zakhar Bron, Prof. Mihaela Martin, Prof. Barnabás Kelemen, Clara-Jumi Kang, Prof. Guy Braunstein and Prof. Łukasz Błaszczyk.

In addition to numerous 1st prizes at the national competition “Jugend Musiziert” in the categories violin solo, duo with 2 string instruments (with her sister) and duo piano and string instrument, Maya won 1st prize at the Polish National Violin Competition and 1st prize at the “Mendelssohn Competition for Young Musicians” in Kronberg in 2013. In 2015, she was awarded 3rd prize at the international “Arthur Grumiaux” competition in Belgium and a scholarship at the international “Andrea Postacchini” competition in Italy. In 2018, she recorded a CD in the rbb studio in Berlin as a result of a special prize at “Jugend Musiziert” and won 3rd prize at the international “Anton Rubinstein” competition, which came with a one-year loan of a violin bow from the Knopf workshop (1880). In the same year, Maya won the Hindemith Prize of the German Music Council at the WESPE competition in Lübeck.
In 2019, she won 1st prize at the “Wanda Wilkomirska” violin competition for Polish music. In 2020, Maya won 1st prize at the Dussmann Competition in Berlin, 1st prize at the Japanese National Competition and 2nd prize at the international “Rudolph Barshai” competition in St. Petersburg. 1st prize at the international “Rudolph Barshai” competition in St. Petersburg. At the 2nd International Tibor Junior Violin Competition in Sion (Switzerland), Maya received the special prize for the commissioned work “Catch Me” by Josef Bardanashvili in 2021. In December of the same year, she won 1st prize at the international “Jeno Hubay” violin competition in Miskolc, Hungary. In May 2022, after a video qualification round, she was the youngest participant in the 8th Sendai International Music Competition and was also selected as a participant for the prestigious Wieniawski International Competition. In April 2023, Maya Kasprzak became the youngest semi-finalist at the 8th Henri Marteau International Violin Competition. At the 14th International Carl Flesch Violin Competition, Maya was awarded 3rd prize as the youngest finalist and received the special prize of the “Festival Academy Budapest”. At the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in August 2023, Maya received the sponsorship prize of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe and the prize for the best performance of the “Jugend Musiziert Niedersachsen” foundation, which is the result of the note for note prize of the Sparda-Bank Hannover Foundation. She was also recently awarded 3rd prize and 2 special prizes at the prestigious “Bartók World Competition” in Budapest in September 2023. She was also selected for the “2nd International Violin Competition Stuttgart” in February 2024 and reached the final round of the selection process for the “Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes”.

Concerts with renowned musicians such as Aleksey Igudesman, Hyung-ki Joo, Daniel Hope, Zakhar Bron and conductors such as Łukasz Borowicz, Prof. Matthias Foremny and János Kovács in major concert halls such as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Berlinische Galerie, the National Forum for Music in Wrocław, the Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal, the “Krzysztof Penderecki European Center for Music” in Zakliczyn and the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest enrich her concert activities.

Since February 2020, Maya Alexandra Kasprzak has been playing the violin “Joseph Gagliano, Naples ca. 1790”, which was kindly made available to her by the German Musical Instrument Fund of the German Foundation for Musical Life in Hamburg.