Maria Ryan • violin & Ciara Moroney • piano

Piano sonatas by Richard Strauss and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Maria Ryan

Award winning violinist and a native of Kilkenny, Maria is a member of the Banbha Quartet, supported by the National String Quartet Foundation, the recently founded Marble Collective and performs in Duo partnership with Ciara Moroney and Dr. Gabriela Mayer. She also recently performed with the Prizm Trio as part of the Cork Orchestral Society Series and is a regular guest leader with the Musici Ensemble.

In 2010, Maria moved to London to join Southbank Sinfonia; there she was awarded the position of Leader, and chosen to perform in their chamber music showcase at Wigmore Hall. Over the following ten years, Maria worked with some of the UK's most prestigious orchestras, including the BBC Concert and Symphony Orchestras, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Maria is a recipient of the RDS Music Bursary, winner of the Heineken Violin Competition and she was awarded the Agility Grant by the Arts Council of Ireland in 2021. She studied at the CIT Cork School of Music with Ruxandra Petcu-Colan and subsequently at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne with Emilian Piedicuta.

Maria also works regularly with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the RTÉ Orchestras, the Irish National Opera, Camerata Ireland and is a Lecturer at the MTU Cork School of Music.

Ciara Moroney

Irish pianist Ciara Moroney has performed throughout Ireland and the UK, specialising in duo playing, chamber music and accompaniment. She is a lecturer in piano and coach-accompaniment at the MTU Cork School of Music. Ciara has a Postgraduate Diploma in Accompaniment from the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied with Andrew West, Michael Dussek and Colin Stone. During her studies there she won the ScoF Huxley Prize for Piano Accompaniment and the Douglas Cameron Prize for duo playing. She also parJcipated in the presJgious Song Circle concert series.

Keenly interested in duo playing and chamber music, Ciara has worked with Emma Johnson (clarinet), Aisling Casey (oboe), Keith Pascoe (violin), Cara O'Sullivan (soprano), Mary Hegarty (soprano), Majella Cullagh (soprano), Brian O!Kane (cello), Mairéad Hickey (violin), Clare Southworth (flute) and Ian Clarke (flute) among many others, and has collaborated with the Vanbrugh and the Carducci string quartets.