Rachmaninov: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 36

New signing and exclusive Naïve Classique artist, Anna Vinnitskaya makes her much anticipated debut album on the Ambroisie label featuring an all-Russian programme of piano sonatas by Rachmaninov, Medtner and Prokofiev and a piece by Gubaidulina.

This is Anna Vinnitskaya’s first ever recording and, unsurprisingly, it has already been met with high critical acclaim. Since its release in France, it was awarded the “Diapason d´Or” (within the “Discoveries” category) and most recently, the “Choc du mois” by Classica Magazine. After going through a period of pronounced disfavour in the second half of the 19th century, the piano sonata enjoyed a veritable renaissance from the start of the twentieth which was due in large measure to Russian composers. Vinnitskaya here explores the way in which the great Russian virtuoso pianist-composers (Medtner, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov) paid homage in their different ways to a genre that was already more than two centuries old. Also included is Chaconne, written by well-known Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina. At only 26, Anna Vinnitskaya has already established a flourishing international career, both in recital and orchestral performances. In 2007, she won first prize in the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels becoming only the second woman in the history of the competition for piano to do so, after Ekaterina Novitskaya in 1968.

‘Lill at his finest’ (Classical CD) of Piano Sonata No. 2

Rachmaninov’s piano music is a world in itself but is also an open window onto the rest of his music. One of the greatest pianists of his time, who had to rely on that talent for a living after several failures as a composer, he poured all his soul into his keyboard music with passion and dignity.

For modern audiences the name of Sergei Rachmaninov, who was born in 1873, conjures up great memorable tunes primarily from his second piano concerto (used in the film Brief Encounter) and second symphony; he was indeed the last flowering of Russian late Romanticism. For his contemporaries, however, he was one of the greatest pianists and who was an expert in expressing moods in the briefest time scale – he was a brilliant miniaturist. He wrote 17 Etudes-Tableaux and 26 Préludes, this collection provides all of the former and 5 of the latter including the one (in C# minor), written when was only 19, which became so popular that it haunted him as he was known to the general public by that piece alone. The Second Sonata is in one movement but three distinct sections, with the slower central movement providing some respite from the turbulence of the outer movements. The Variations on a theme of Corelli was Rachmaninov’s last work for solo piano and is based on the traditional tune La follia which Corelli used in his twelfth violin sonata. The Variations are skilfully wrought as they are in the Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, the work that immediately followed it; the tune on which the Variations are made is the 24th Caprice for solo violin by the brilliant violinist-composer Paganini.

This Armenian pianist began her piano studies at the age of five. In 2008 she won the Montreal International Music Competition. Following her performances in Utah, the Salt Lake City Desert News wrote “Her sense of artistry permeates all of her playing.”