Anna Lambke

Fabio Luisi conducts the Metropolitan Opera in this production of Verdi's work, based on Shakespeare's tragic play. Zeljko Lucic stars in the title role with Anna Netrebko as his wife, Lady Macbeth. The cast also includes Joseph Calleja as Macduff and René Pape as Banquo. New York Observer stated: “.. a superstar cast … the most potent: Anna Netrebko's ferociously exciting star turn as Lady Macbeth … a "demented" performance, one so exciting it propels both artist and audience figuratively to the brink of madness.”

Anna Lucia Richter returns to PENTATONE after her acclaimed Schubert album Heimweh with Il delirio della passione; a recording full of Monteverdi treasures, from heart-wrenching opera scenes (Lamento d Arianna,Pur ti miro from Poppea and the Prologue of L'orfeo) and religious music (Confitebor) to bucolic songs (Si dolce è il tormento). Richter works together with Ensemble Claudiana and Luca Pianca, one of the most eminent Monteverdi interpreters of our age. They offer a fresh perspective on Monteverdi's music by penetrating deeply into the original sources.

Anna Vinnitskaya celebrates dance, or rather the dances of composers from very different periods and styles: Ravel, Shostakovich and Widmann. 'In all these works, you can feel in some way transported to the world of childhood. Because I believe the childhoods of each of these three composers are reflected there', says the pianist. In his Valses nobles et sentimentales, Ravel paid tribute to Schubert. A few years later, he transcribed for solo piano his ballet score La Valse, in which 'billowing clouds part from time to time, allowing us to glimpse waltzing couples'.

The concert season of the Ruhr Piano Festival 2020 has suffered heavily under the Corona pandemic shutdown – loosing more than 85% of all scheduled concerts. In the late June/July days some concerts had taken place, some were live recorded; some concert also had taken place in the early autumn 2020, before the entire new planning was cancelled as well for all 2020, like for so many other concerts and festivals. At least the few live recordings are showing an interesting picture of a list of unknown piano works of Beethoven. It is therefore for sure a rich source for collectors and connaisseurs.

As an instrument from Italy, one that was exotic and evocative of Mediterranean atmospheres, the mandolin was very much in fashion in France until the end of the Century of Enlightenment: a fact also confirmed by many iconographic and musical sources. Pizzicar Galante, an ensemble that stands today as a benchmark for the interpretation of the galant literature for mandolin and continuo, has been acclaimed for the "finesse, creativity and spirit" (Olivier Fourés, Diapason) and "communicative energy" of it's performances (Sébastien Llinares, France Musique).

The pianist Anna Vinnitskaya has built up an impressive discography since her victory at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2007: Bach, Brahms, Ravel, and of course the Russian composers with whom she has been familiar since her childhood in Novorossiysk, then her studies with Evgeni Koroliov. She has now made her first Chopin recording, coupling the four Ballades, a cross between the miniature and the sonata, with the four Impromptus he composed at different periods of his life, between 1835 and 1842.