Growing with music
Anna Vinnitskaya grew up in a family of pianists. It was equally formative that she then sought her own path away from home.
"It was only thanks to my parents, who did it so well and professionally, that I got to the level I'm at now," says Anna Vinnitskaya. However, growing up in a family of pianists was "definitely exhausting". She was constantly under observation and could be corrected at any time. Her father, who taught jazz, was rather reserved. With her mother, however, she spent "hours sitting next to me and telling me what to do". When her parents were not at home, she also "played truant" because, as the Russian, born in 1983, says of herself, "I was a completely normal child and liked to play - on the piano or with the ball. Practising, on the other hand, I found rather tedious".
Four-handed discoveries
She talked about literature with her piano teacher at the time and together they explored the great orchestral works in arrangements for four hands. In the process, Anna Vinnitskaya learnt about the vastness of the musical world. it was "almost relaxing", she says, because the contrast to working with her mother was considerable. In a playful way, she and her teacher brought to life music that she had otherwise not heard at all in the Soviet Union or only heard on records: "This interaction helped me to retain and continue my enthusiasm for music." And the more she discovered, the more she understood what the compositions gave her - for example, when she played her first Schubert sonata: "It was like a world that opened up for me. It was my love, so to speak, I immersed myself in this music."
Motivated and spurred on by such intimate moments, she won her first competition in Moscow at the age of twelve and increasingly developed her own approach to music. Today, she has long known that she wants to tell a story with a work. This is also the case with Schumann's piano concerto, which she will soon be performing in Zurich: For her, it is "pure romanticism, in the good sense", the tension holds "from the beginning to the end".
New place - extended family
The path to this point was not an easy one for Anna Vinnitskaya - despite her caring, protective environment. It was she herself who catapulted herself out of it when she moved to Hamburg at the age of 18 and experienced "this tough start", which was so groundbreaking for her career: "It also made me more robust as a person. I learnt an incredible amount."
However, she was not alone in this new world. In addition to constant visits to her home country, she not only found a professor, a mentor and a role model in Evgeni Koroliov in Hamburg, but also a family in him and his wife: "The way they see things, the way they live and how they are so honest about music really impresses me. They are like a beacon for me."
From one generation to the next
Anna Vinnitskaya takes a grateful yet analytical look at her career. She approaches the next generation with the same appreciative yet demanding attitude. For more than 15 years, she has been passing on her knowledge to up-and-coming talent at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, discovering new works for herself in the process. She always endeavours to give her students as much freedom as possible within the stylistic framework. In this way, she accompanies the young talents, whom she describes as "incredibly courageous, creative and interesting", just as attentively as she once experienced it herself.
We use deepL.com for our translations into English.