Piano Masterclass with recipients of the Paderewski Festival awards Mikołaj Brzostowicz and Piotr Pączkowski (Poland)

Piano faculty member Dr. Natasha Kislenko will lead a piano masterclass with two young students from Poland on Friday, November 13, at 11 am in Karl Geiringer Hall. They are part of the exchange program through Ignacy Paderewski Music Festival and Foundation.

Every two years since 2009, selected winners of the Youth Piano Competition in Paso Robles are invited for a two-week Cultural Exchange Program led by Paderewski Festival Artistic Director, Marek Zebrowski. It includes master classes and concerts at historical venues in Kraków and Warsaw. In turn, every two years since 2010, young pianists from Poland--selected from among the winners of local competitions--come to California to perform at the Paderewski Festival, attend master classes and stay with the Central Coast families whose children travelled to Poland on the Cultural Exchange Program. This unique international educational initiative is jointly supported by the Paderewski Festival, Central Coast wineries, local civic organizations, and diplomatic representatives of the Polish government in the United States.

Masterclass program will feature works by Chopin, Liszt, Paderewski and Barber. 

Bios: 

Born in 2014, Mikołaj Brzostowicz studies with Dr. Joanna Świtlik and has

already been recognized with fourteen Grand Prix and thirty First Prizes at numerous

piano competitions in Poland and abroad. He also received seven top prizes from the

National Chopin Institute in Warsaw. In addition to these honors, during the years

2022-2024 Mikołaj was a scholarship recipient of Poland’s Fund for Children and the

2026 Young Poland Scholarship funded by the Ministry of Culture and National

Heritage.

At the age of eight, Mikołaj was the youngest performer to appear at the

Musical Quarter Hour concert cycle held at Chopin’s birthplace of Żelazowa Wola,

where he has appeared annually ever since. He also concertized at the Lutosławski

Radio Studio, at the Chopin Monument series at the Łazienki Park in Warsaw and

appeared in an audio and video recording for Poland’s Chopin Radio.

Mikołaj’s performances include concerts at the philharmonic halls in Warsaw,

Kraków, Łódź, and Poznań, as we as at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. As a soloist in

Chopin’s F-minor Concerto, Mikołaj appeared with the National Chamber Philharmonic in Warsaw and the Northern Czech Philharmonic in Teplice and as a chamber musician Mikołaj performed with the Baltic Quintet, Prima Vista String Quartet and Berliner Solisten. He has also participated in master classes with such acclaimed pianists as Beata Bilińska, Martín García García, Bronisława Kawalla, Marc Laforêt, Ingmar Lazar, Pavel Nersessian, Andrzej Tatarski, and Ingolf Wunder, among others.

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Piotr Pączkowski (17) currently studies piano at the Bronisław Rutkowski Music School in Kraków with Prof Andrzej Pikul. He has already garnered an impressive collection of awards at various competitions throughout Europe, including First Prizes at the Eighth International Chopin Piano Competition in Turzno, Poland (2024), Fourth Romańska-Werner Piano and Chamber Music Competition in Kraków (2024), International Sikorska-Wojtacha Piano Competition in Wieliczka, Poland (2024) and Third International Paderewski Piano Competition in Otwock Wielki, Poland (2026). 

Piotr Pączkowski was also awarded Second Prize at the International Piano Competition in Ortobello, Italy, in 2026. During the past few years Piotr has furthered his pianistic skills at a variety of master classes, including at the Małopolska Talent Academy and Kraków Summer Music Academy where he worked with professors Pedro Burmeister, Andrzej Pikul, Constantin Sandu, and Michael Wessel and as well as with Tomasz Marut at the School of Masters in Krzyżowa, Poland. Piotr Pączkowski is also the 2026 recipient of the Bema 20 Foundation scholarship.