Anna Vinnitskaya

Anna Vinnitskaya is a Russian pianist known for her flawless technique, powerful musicality, and mature sense of phrasing. Also a respected educator, she is a piano professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg. She was born in 1983 in Novorossiysk, Russia, to a musical family. Both of her parents were pianists, and she started receiving piano lessons from her mother when she was six years old. Vinnitskaya made her debut with an orchestra when she was eight, performed her first recital at the age of nine, and in 1995 she won the International Junoshenki Competition. That same year she moved with her family to Rostov-on-Don, where she became a student of Sergei Ossipenko at the Rachmaninov Conservatory. After completing her studies in 2001, she enrolled at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg under Ralf Nattkemper and Evgeni Koroliov, and continued winning top prizes in piano competitions through the 2000s. In 2009, she became a piano professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, and she released her debut recording Rachmaninov, Gubaidulina, Medtner, Prokofiev: Piano Sonatas on the Naïve label. The album received enthusiastic reviews, and it won the Diapason d´Or award in the “Discoveries” category. She received similar feedback from critics regarding her subsequent releases Prokofiev, Ravel: Piano Concertos, which won an ECHO Klassik award, and Ravel, which also earned a Diapason d´Or award and the Editor’s Choice designation from Gramophone Magazine. Vinnitskaya’s 2019 release Bach: Concertos for Pianos was nominated for an International Classical Music Award in the Baroque Instrumental category. That same year, she made debuts with the Sächsische Staatskapelle and the Berlin Philharmonic, and served as artist in residence at the Dresden Philharmonic. She toured with Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic in 2021, and she released Chopin: 4 Ballades; 4 Impromptus. She performed in a piano trio with violinist Emmanuel Tjeknavorian and cellist Daniel Müller-Schot in 2022, and in 2023 made her debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, performed a cycle of Rachmaninov piano concertos with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, and served as artist in residence at the Kammerakademie Potsdam. Vinnitskaya released Piano Dances: Ravel, Shostakovich, Widmann on the Alpha label in 2024. ~ RJ Lambert, Rovi