Date: 11 Sept 2014 (Thursday)
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Le Quadri Ballroom, North wing campus
FREE ADMISSION
Schubert Sonatine g-moll for Violin and Piano D. 408
Liszt Sonetto del Petrarca No. 104 for Piano Solo
Shostakovich 4 preludes, op. 34, Arrangement for Violin and Piano by Dmitry Tsiganov
Tchaikovsky Meditation, op. 43 for Violin and Piano
Born and raised in Moscow, Anna Kandinskaya began playing the violin at a young age and subsequently studied at the Moscow and Bern Conservatories, completing her postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Music, London.
Her musical path has been illuminated by several successes in international competitions. She has been awarded the First Prize in the International Violin Competition of the Munich Konzertgesellschaft and was winner of the International Yehudi Menuhin Competition in Paris. Following this achievement, Anna Kandinskaya had the privilege of working regularly with Lord Menuhin and touring all Europe under his conduct.
Anna Kandinskaya has performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras, amongst others, with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. She has appeared in the Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Münchener Philharmonie am Gasteig, Münchener Residenz, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall, Tonhalle Zürich, Musikverein Wien and the Wiener Konzerthaus.
Among the international music festivals she has been invited to the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Tivoli Copenhagen, to Bad Kissingen, to the Satander Festival, the Haydn-Festival Eisenstadt, the International Oleg Kagan Festival Tegernsee and the Mozartwochen Salzburg.
At Gidon Kremer´s invitation Anna Kandinskaya appeared at the Lockenhaus Festival, touring in the following years as an artistic guest with the Kremerata Baltica.
On Valery Gergiev´s invitation she has appeared at the Stars of the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg both as a soloist and in recital as well as the Mikkeli Festival, Finland, where she performed the Alban Berg Violin Concerto.
She is regular performer at Yuri Bashmet´s Music Festival Elba, Italy. Recently she appeared as a soloist with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and their conductor Alexander Rudin.
Anna Kandinskaya performed chamber music together with partners as András Schiff, Gidon Kremer, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Natalia Gutman, Boris Pergamenschikow, Yuri Bashmet, Lars Vogt, Mikhail Rudy, Miklos Perenji, Nabuko Imai and the Altenberg Trio.
Since 2003 Anna Kandinskaya is teaching at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Vienna.
Austrian-Russian pianist Lisa Smirnova is an internationally recognized concert artist renowned for her interpretations of baroque and Classical repertoire. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recently remarked that her “sense of style, use of phrasing and ornamentation and tempi, that make the piano an instrument of harmony of vibrating strings, gave her performance its transcendent and unmistakable character.”
Lisa Smirnova appears in the world’s finest recital halls – the Wigmore Hall London, the Musikverein and Konzerthaus Vienna, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall as well as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and has also appeared at the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival, Schleswig-Holstein and Salzburg’s Mozartwoche. She performs with distinguished conductors such as Manfred Honeck, Carlos Kalmar, Andrey Boreyko, John Storgards, and Ivor Bolton among others. A champion of contemporary music, the artist regularly collaborates with renowned composers such as Wolfgang Rihm, Rodion Schedrin, Giya Kancheli and Valentin Silvestrov. Highlights this season include performances with the Salzburg Chamber Soloists, Tallinn Sinfonietta, Ljubljana and Belgrade Philarmonics, and the Kuopio and Lahti Philharmonic orchestra at major European concert halls such as Vienna Konzerthaus and Cologne Philharmonic Hall among others, and a US Tour.
Ms. Smirnova will also perform a full cycle of Bach concerti for keyboard, as well as local premieres of “Concerto for myself” by Friedrich Gulda. She will be featured on disc with violinist Benjamin Schmid performing works by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Weill.
Her recordings, spanning the standard repertoire, have been given the highest praise by critics worldwide. Her debut album for ECM of the Eight Great Suites by Georg Friedrich Handel won the BBC Instrumental Choice of the year in 2011. The Financial Times remarked that “…Smirnova shows, what we, and most pianists, have been missing, for she paints the gigues, fugues and sarabandes with such spirit and wit, that it’s impossible not to be won over by their joy and sophistication.”
Ms. Smirnova also devotes herself to professional music education. From 2007-2009 she had a position of assistant professor at the Mozarteum University of Music and Arts in Salzburg, Austria and in 2010 she founded the Razumovsky Music Academy Vienna which specialized in promotion of highly gifted young musicians and where she currently serves as the director.
Institute of Music, UCSI University 