Rosina Roccavilla

Following the success of their last album, ‘Timelapse’, this new album from Orchestra of the Swan is a collection of extraordinary works connected by ideas of pilgrimage, contemplation, exploration and enlightenment through the works of composers such as Richter, Respighi, Britten, Piazzolla, Brian Eno, Nico Muhly, Joy Division and more.

Rosina Bessie was born in Ukraine, the daughter of a Dutch merchant doing business in Kiev. The Czar’s assassination in 1881 unleashed three days of violent anti-Semitic riots, and many Jewish families like the Bessies moved to Moscow. She was a prodigy at the piano and took lessons from a piano student at the Moscow Conservatory, Josef Lhevinne, who was five years older. Later she became a student at that Conservatory and studied with Josef’s teacher, Vassily Safonov. She graduated in 1898 with a gold medal, just as Josef had done in 1892. That same year (1898) she married Josef Lhevinne and he went on to a great international career as a virtuoso pianist. Once when someone heard her and exclaimed that she a better pianist than her husband she was horrified, and vowed from that moment on never to play solo again. She performed only with him as his duo-piano partner until after his death in 1944.