Russian pianist Anna Vinnitskaya began piano lessons at the age of six, giving her first concert with an orchestra just two years later. She is renowned for her technique and her musical expressiveness. Initially educated at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, she went on to study at the Moscow Conservatoire with Sergei Ossipenko.
In 1995, aged only 12, she won the International Junoshenki Competition, her first of many major competition successes. Two years later she won the Jaen Competition in Spain and in 2004 the Elise Mayer Competition in Hamburg. The pinnacle of her competition wins, and the one which brought her the most renown, was the Queen Elizabeth Music Competition in Brussels (2007). The judges particularly commended her performance of Ravel's 'Gaspard de la Nuit' in the first round and Prokofiev's 'Piano Concerto No. 2' in the final. She went on to win a further competition in 2008 when she was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Award at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. As a result of her first place in the Queen Elizabeth Competition, Vinnitskaya was invited to play in several concerts and at many festivals. She has performed with world leading orchestras Munich Philharmonic, Hamburg Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic and New Japan Philharmonic. She has worked with many conductors including Andris Nelsons, Marek Janowski and Andrey Boreyko.
She released her first solo album in 2009 on the Naïve label. It included works by Rachmaninov, Gubaidulina, Medtner and Prokofiev and was awarded the Diapason d'Or. Her first album with an orchestra was released in 2010. The album was recorded with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester in Berlin and conducted by Gilbert Varga. It featured her as the soloist in 'Piano Concerto No. 2' by Prokofiev and 'Piano Concerto in G Major' by Ravel. The album won an Echo Klassik award in 2011. Her third album, released in 2012, featured works by Ravel including 'Miroirs' and 'Gaspard de la Nuit' and was also awarded the Diapason d'Or.
Vinnitskaya has a repertoire spanning from Bach to contemporary composers such as Sofia Gubaidulina and enjoys playing works by not only the Russian masters Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, but also classic works by composers such as Debussy, Ravel, Chopin and Brahms. She currently lives in Hamburg, where she teaches at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater and is Artist in Residence with Dresden Philharmonic.
