Anna 2019

Over the past five years, pianist Anna Vinnitskaya has made three Alpha recordings dedicated to Shostakovitch, Brahms et Rachmaninov. Evgeni Koroliov is a great master of the piano, a great Bach specialist, whose recordings of Bach are an acclaimed benchmark. His piano duo with his wife, Ljupka Hadzi-Georgieva, has made its mark over the past few years in all the major international concert venues. Also a highly reputed teacher, Koroliov was Anna Vinnitskaya’s professor at Hamburg.

The Dubhlinn Gardens: an evening in the high society of 18th century Dublin, where traditional music was ‘civilising’ itself for the salon… This programme was inspired by the passion for traditional Irish music that flautist Anna Besson has felt since she was a child. Surprising as it may seem, it was playing the Irish flute that led her to study the baroque instrument… For the past few years Reinoud Van Mechelen too has begun to train himself in the traditional Irish song with Karan Casey and other singers who have specialised in the unaccompanied Sean-nós. This twofold practice of early as well as traditional music has led the ensemble A Nocte Temporis to offer a programme that is both vivacious and extremely touching.

For a long time, a large portion of Handel’s early opera Rodrigo was thought to have been lost. It was not until 1974 that the printed libretto turned up again and nine years later the third act was found in the Earl of Shaftesbury’s Handel collection. On August 29, 1984, finally, the work was revived during the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music and in 2019 it’s on the programme at the Göttingen International Handel Festival.

On her second album proper, the Scottish producer/composer/singer-songwriter dials up her rock band’s dynamic power, creating a nervy, chaotically controlled embodiment of contemporary uncertainty.