Anna Vinnitskaya – Piano Dances (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:18 minutes | 971 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Anna Vinnitskaya celebrates dance, or rather the dances of composers from very different periods and styles: Ravel, Shostakovich and Widmann. ‘In all these works, you can feel in some way transported to the world of childhood. Because I believe the childhoods of each of these three composers are reflected there’, says the pianist. In his Valses nobles et sentimentales , Ravel paid tribute to Schubert. A few years later, he transcribed for solo piano his ballet score La Valse , in which ‘billowing clouds part from time to time, allowing us to glimpse waltzing couples’. Shostakovich’s Dances of the Dolls make me think of the Soviet cartoons of my childhood’, says Anna Vinnitskaya. ‘They also remind me of Mozart: they are as bright as diamonds, sincere and beautiful.’ The Zirkustänze (Circus Dances) composed by Jörg Widmann in 2012, a brilliant kaleidoscope of emotions and parodies, round off the programme.
Read moreAnna Vinnitskaya, Kremerata Baltica – Shostakovich: Piano Concertos (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 49:49 minutes | 450 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
‘When I performed the Second Piano Concerto for the first time at the age of eleven, his music seemed very optimistic to me. Only later did I understand everything else that is concealed behind the “façade” of Shostakovich’s music.’
The Russian pianist reveals two facets of the composer’s music on this disc by juxtaposing the First Piano Concerto in C minor op. 35, an ‘insolent’ composition with a kaleidoscope of atmospheres and stylistic registers (Russian Romanticism, American jazz, neoclassicism) that constantly surprise the listener, and the more traditional Concerto in F major, which radiates youthful high spirits.
A pupil of Sergey Ossipenko at the Serge Rachmaninoff Conservatory, then of the great Evgeni Koroliov at the Musikhochschule in Hamburg, Anna Vinnitskaya won the Leonard Bernstein Prize, but it was her First Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 2007 that launched her career. For this recording, Anna Vinnitskaya is surrounded by partners of the front rank: the famous Kremerata Baltica, regarded as one of the most creative ensembles on today’s musical scene, and the prestigious wind players of the Staatskapelle Dresden.
Read moreEvgeni Koroliov, Anna Vinnitskaya, Ljupka Hadzi Georgieva & Kammerakademie Potsdam – Bach: Concertos for Pianos (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:23:11 minutes | 2,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Over the past five years, pianist Anna Vinnitskaya has made three Alpha recordings dedicated to Shostakovitch, Brahms et Rachmaninov.
Read moreAnna Vinnitskaya, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Krzysztof Urbański – Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18 & Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 56:33 minutes | 490 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Serge Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto might never have seen the light of day had it not been for hypnosis: before the twenty-seven-year-old composer began work on it, he was on his last legs – financially, artistically and psychologically. Dr Nikolay Dahl hypnotised his patient every day, whispering to him: ‘You will write your concerto. You will work with great fluency. The concerto will be of excellent quality.’ The creative block disappeared, and the concerto’s premiere in Moscow in 1901 was a triumph for Rachmaninov, who played the solo part himself. Anna Vinnitskaya says she feels ‘a spring-like atmosphere’ in this work: throughout there is a sense of movement, of awakening. The music passes through the most contrasting psychological landscapes, but moves towards clarity and light. Rachmaninov composed the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 1934, ten years before his death. Brahms, Liszt, Lutosławski and Andrew Lloyd Webber are among the remarkable roll call of composers inspired by Paganini’s theme. The Russian pianist and the Polish conductor Krzysztof Urbański have often played Rachmaninoff together, on every continent. The two artists, both of whom present here their third disc for Alpha, were reunited in the NDR studios in Hamburg to record this repertory that fits them like a glove.
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Anna Vinnitskaya – Chopin: 4 Ballades & 4 Impromptus (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:19 minutes | 811 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Anna Vinnitskaya adds to her award-winning discography with her first Chopin recording, which couples the four Ballades with the four Impromptus.
The pianist Anna Vinnitskaya has built up an impressive discography since her victory at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2007: Bach, Brahms, Ravel, and of course the Russian composers with whom she has been familiar since her childhood in Novorossiysk, then her studies with Evgeni Koroliov.
The Russian pianist has won praise for her immaculate technique and abundant musicality, qualities in evidence on this captivating performance. This recording couples the four Ballades, a cross between the miniature and the sonata, with the four Impromptus Chopin composed at different periods of his life, between 1835 and 1842.
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