Prokofiev & Ravel: Piano Concertos

“She is a wholly exceptional artist, the possessor of a fabulous technique, and her musical understanding is a very rare quality...Her playing of the Ravel Concerto is breathtaking...I am sure that this is just what Ravel wanted - it really crackles with electricity, her passagework as light and as brilliant as quicksilver...These concertos are very different works, but this young pianist has the measure of them both - in spades.” --International Record Review, April 2011

Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor was written in 1913 and dedicated to a friend of the composer who had recently committed suicide. It was revised in 1923, and this version remains one of the most technically challenging works in the standard repertoire. Following a highly successful tour of America as piano soloist, Maurice Ravel finished his Piano Concerto in G Major in 1931. The concerto is heavily influenced by jazz, which at the time was highly popular in Paris as well as the USA.

“The Prokofiev concerto can sound flashy and empty, but Vinnitskaya's more fantastical and demented view reveals its hidden depths. She rips through the fiercely tough first-movement cadenza like a force of nature...Exemplary, high-wire Prokofiev.” --Classic FM Magazine, April 2011 ****

“Anna Vinnitskaya has a dry, clear sound which I think [Prokofiev] would rather have admired...Gilbert Varga's direction is precise and detailed...I certainly want to hear more from this phenomenally equipped pianist.” --BBC Music Magazine, Febuary 2011 ****

“The opening whiplash of Ravel's "Piano Concerto in G major" portends the virtuosic fireworks to follow...But the concerto's real achievement lies in the final two movements, whose fantastical twists grow more unsettling by the minute.” --The Independent, 28th January 2011 ***