The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra will perform with charismatic pianist Martina Filjak, on Saturday, September 21 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, September 22 at 3:00 p.m. at the Robinson Center Music Hall. This is kicks off the ASO’s 2013-2014 Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks Series.

The program includes Shostakovich’s Festive Overture; Op. 96; Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23 and Stravinksy’s Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring).

The ASO will be under the baton of Music Director Philip Mann.

One of the most exciting young artists to emerge in recent years, Martina Filjak is garnering international praise for her poetic passion and technical mastery at the keyboard as well as for her charismatic personality and magnetic stage presence. Her transition from prodigy to mature artist has been all the more remarkable against the backdrop of political maelstrom that defined her native Croatia during her childhood.

Martina’s unwavering hunger for music, nurtured by piano teacher parents, has been her lodestar. Civil strife or no, she graduated from the Zagreb Music Academy and subsequently from the Vienna Conservatory and the soloist’s class at Hannover’s Hochschule für Musik. She participated in masterclasses at the Como Piano Academy, where she was coached by Dmitri Bashkirov, Peter Frankl and Andreas Staier.

In 2009, Martina Filjak won first prize in the Cleveland International Piano Competition, following which she made concerto debuts at the Konzerthaus Berlin and Vienna’s Musikverein and her recital debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall/Zankel Hall (“Brilliant, sensitive and imaginative playing with resourcefulness of technique and naturalness of musicality. …A striking individuality …A pianist to watch” The New York Times). Prior to winning the Cleveland competition, she had been first prizewinner of the 2007 Viotti International Piano Competition in Italy and the 2008 Maria Canals International Piano Competition in Barcelona.

She loves to travel and speaks seven languages.