A playing style that unites stunning virtuosity and a delicate touch in the best possible way. […] Rarely have I met such a versatile artist.
– Wolfgang Rihm
Anna Zassimova’s piano playing blends sparkling technique and vibrant musicality – pianistic qualities that one might associate with the Russian piano school in the mould of Heinrich Neuhaus and his pupils Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels.
– Bayrische Rundfunk
Thoroughly exquisite
– Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
ANNA ZASSIMOVA is a pianist of a kind rarely still found, the sort you’d imagine walking out the pages of a 19th century novel. Her playing bleeds with passionate intensity, all softness and fury, coupled with an unparalleled knowledge and sympathetic understanding of the works she plays. There’s nothing showy about it, though it’s riveting, and all the emotion – and my god there is plenty – is of the sort that can only be lived, and cannot be faked.
Anna Zassimova is a product of – perhaps the last generation of – the Great Russian School founded by Heinrich Neuhaus: Bayerische Rundfunk were the first of many to compare her playing to that of Richter and Gilels. The comparison is an apt one.
She trained at the world-renowned Gnessin School in Moscow from age six. While studying her first degree (in piano, at Gnessin Academy, taught by Vladimir Tropp), she experienced the traumas of the collapse of the Soviet Union first hand and full-on, an experience she credits with causing her to “commit” to her art as the only stable point in what was, for her, a time of great instability. Her education, she explains, trained pianists’ hands and minds, almost from birth; it was at this time that piano became her soul. Personal circumstances led her to leave Russia for Germany during this period. She received a DAAD Fellowship to do so, and duly studied at the Karlsruhe Music University (under Michael Uhde und Markus Stange) where she now teaches.
Over the course of the last decade, she has entranced audiences at a plethora of festivals and major concert halls, both with her solo recitals and her concerti. Her solo CD recordings, featuring Romantic and contemporary works have drawn unchecked praise from every quarter. These recordings have focussed on Chopin, her great ‘non-Russian’ love, Schumann, Brahms and fin-de-siecle Russian composers. Vergessene Weisen (“Forgotten Ways”) and it’s sequel, Sonata Reminiscenza, her albums of disappearing Romantic and modernist Russian music and ways of feeling, featuring Medtner, Catoire, Scriabin Roslavets and Wyschnegradsky are widely considered as her greatest recordings. She has also featured on chamber recordings of Tanejew and Catoire, released by cpo. The new Chopin-Album, recorded for BIS, will come out on 2. June 2023.
Zassimova is unusual among performers of her calibre for the breadth of her artistic education, and has taken additional degrees in musicology (where her monograph on Georgy Catoire is singularly responsible for renewed interest in the early 20th century composer) and history of art. She has worked with numerous galleries and events to create programmes pairing paintings and piano works, and entrancing audiences with her discourses on the former and performances of the latter. She is also herself an avid painter, with numerous collectors of her minituarist images of the Russia she remembers,
But it is the piano, truly an extension of Zassimova’s soul, at which all these disparate passions, tempests and deep thoughts come together. And how they do! There are many great piano performers in our time. Zassimova is a true Artist.
– Adam Donen
Events
Event Information:
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Tue23Oct2018Wed24Oct20187:00 pmState Tschaikowski Conservatory
Moscow (RU) Tschaikowski Conservatory. Concert&Conference
Concert&Conference "From Modern to Futurism / Russian Aspect"
By Conference on 23.10.18: The Phenomenon of composer Georges Catoire.
In Concert on 24.10.18, at 7 pm: Georges Catoire, Quatre Preludes Op 17, Deux Poems Op. 34,
Audio and Video
Hear Zassimova's Klavierfestival Ruhr debut, recorded for Deutschlandfunk
Anna Zassimova recordings
Assorted live and recorded works2003 - 2021
Recordings
Fryderyk Chopin
“Anna Zassimova not only plays Chopin, she brings him to life. A bit of a romantic image, admittedly, but this is what Zassimova’s playing evokes. Her Chopin is one without concessions, with all the passions, feelings of nostalgia and longing, joy, lust for life and then doubts. Her drive and empathy are supported by a fabulous technique and a colourful, varied light touch.” – Marjolijn Sengers LUISTER, NL
“Anna Zassimova brings imagination, marmoreal sound and searching intellect to her music-making… Her way with phrasing, rubato and silence, the lingered „speaking“ pauses and magically dissipated endings (something of a trademark), her nuancing of mood and atmosphere, weave spells and spin allusions. Poetics and pianism on a grand stage.” – International Piano Magazin, September 2023.
https://www.recordsinternational.com/…
George Catoire. String Quartet Op. 23, Piano Quintet Op. 28
“Every new CD by The Utrecht String Quartet contains a musical discovery. In Anna Zassimova, members of the USQ found a like-minded musician, whose recent book about the composer as well as her recordings of Catoire’s works created a renewed interest in the composer. This collaboration resulted in a valuable musical document that gives the listener a good idea of a particularly vivid music with a distinct character of its own.” – Marjolijn Sengers LUISTER, September 2023, NL
Clara Wieck, Brahms, Liszt, Schumann & Godowsky: Fantasiebilder aus Wien
„Anna Zassimova is once again able to create poetic pearls even out of the best known… Petrarch Sonnet and the Consolations by Liszt are just as captivating with their lucid agogic and finely nuanced touch as the Romances of the Schumanns or the Intermezzi by Brahms. Zassimova takes her time, grants quiet freedom. This opens the ears” – Piano News.
“Zassimova has a clever way of conveying controlled but pent-up passion. Her touch lingers on the notes so that each is sustained long enough to suggest that there is a complicated emotional current flowing just beneath the surface.” – presentarts.co.uk
Antonin Dvorak: Legends Op. 59, From the Bohemian Forest Op. 68.
Original version for piano four hands
A journey through the pastoral wonderland of Dvořák’s exquisite miniatures for piano duet, full of character and whimsical charm, passionate drama, vivid imagery, symbolism, and nostalgic atmosphere. These gems of the repertoire deserve to be better known, as they express in miniature the essence of Dvořák’s genius.
Sonata Reminiscenza
“Anna Zassimova successfully combines formidable technical abilities with poetic feeling in this program of rarely performed Russian piano pieces.” – Remy Franck, Pizzicato, Luxembourg
“Anna Zassimova posséde cette technique d’acier propre à l’école russe de piano mais aussi un toucher lumineux et subtil dans la lignée de Richter et Gilles“ – Arts, lettres et sciences, France. Octobre 2018, Nr. 738.
Vergessene Weisen (Forgotten Ways)
“Anna Zassimova is deeply enmeshed in the complex expressive worlds of these Russian piano works. The highly virtuosic, and at the same time expressive, performance of the native Moscovite is unmistakably from the Russian Piano School.” – Bayerische Rundfunk
“Anna Zassimova masterfully unfolds these miniatures in their brittle intimacy, with great understanding.” – FonoForum
Chopin - Late Works
“Every pianist plays Chopin at one time or the other as a rite of passage, but few have illuminated his sensibility as well as Richter, Lipatti, Rubinstein, Horowitz, Ashkenazy (especially in his earliest recordings) and most recently, Perahia and Kissin… Anna Zassimova is all about flow… a new force to be reckoned with. You’ll hear her gift instantly. She plays with a velvety, cushioned sound punctuated by crisp attacks in the main line, creating a dreamlike ambiance. ” – American Record Guide
Catoire - Works for Violin and Piano
“They do not just touch Catoire’s music with their fingertips, but also solve the works’ many expressive demands. It is a great posthumous fortune for the composer that he has found such a convincing advocate as Zassimova. Her comprehensive playing elicits the full range of fragile, delicate, stormy and pressing moods from the piano.” – Klassik.com
Tanejew - Piano Chamber Music
“Zassimova and her colleagues give as good a performance as you could wish, bold and Romantic, but also clear and precise. By a whisker then, this recording gets the top recommendation, even if Pletnev is relegated to second place with much reluctance. If you don’t countenance even the suspicion of Romantic excess, buy the Pletnev in preference to this. But whatever you do, buy at least one of them.” – Classical CD (UK)
Zassimova continues her project of repopularising lesser known Russian romantics with this superbly textured recording of Tanejew’s Quintet.
Brahms - Declaration of Love
“A deeply intelligent interpretation vacillating between vicious passions and intimate contemplation.” – Das Ensemble magazine
“Zassimova’s seamless phrasing and delicate, yet substantive touch to the “golden” tone of the period Beckstein piano, is distinctive.” – The Clarinet
Chopin - Mélodies polonaises Op. 74
“Irresistable!” – L’Education Musicale
“Anna Zassimova, a passionate pianist of Chopin, has a touch that is capable of elucidating all the pleasure to be found in these melodies, and shows a flexibility of play indispensable to their interpretation… played with virtuoso content, the piano Érard, an instrument pampered by the composer himself, takes the place of a true confidant, to reveal the happiest feelings as to deliver the darkest emotions.” – Res Musica
Georgy Catoire, Revived Masterpieces
World premiere recordings of some relevant Russian chamber works composed at the turn of the 20th Century by Georgy Catoire, performed by the Catoire Ensemble.
Catoire - Works for Voice and Piano
“Anna Zassimova has dedicated herself with passion and perseverance to this composer as a musicologist as well as a pianist. Her knowledge, art and love are audible. Yana Ivanilova, who has already recorded with Boris Berezovsky a beautiful record with songs by Nikolai Medtner, once again appears as master of the genre. Once again, this fine recording demonstrates the level of reflection and creative power Russian music reached just before the Communist revolution – at a rapid pace and extreme compression – and how closely it touches Western Europe.” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Chopin - The Erard Recordings
“Chopin played on his favourite piano by a pianist who provides an empathy that is both convincing for the music of the composer and for the quality of the historical instrument.” – Bayerische Rundfunk
“The recording stands out from the multitude of comparable recordings due mainly to the nuanced contrasts of the pianist Anna Zassimova, who once again proves her excellence.” – Klavier.de
Paintings
Georgy Catoire
Anna Zassimova’s academic work, beginning in 2000, and growing to her Doctorate, has been focussed on the popularisation and study of the Franco-Russian fin-de-siecle composer Georgy Catoire (Moscow 27 April 1861 – 21 May 1926).
Working with archives and libraries in Moscow and Berlin, and with the assistance of Catoire’s heirs in Germany, Russia and France, she wrote the first comprehensive, systematised analysis of the composer and his life. This book Georges Catoire – seine Musik, sein Leben, seine Ausstrahlung (Studia slavica musicologica, 49. Ernst Kuhn, Berlin, 2011) has been referenced extensively in journals including SEER at Oxford University, Music & Letters UK, Die Tonkunst, das Orchester, Neue Musik Zeitung and many others. She has also published texts on Catoire in German Tchaikovsky Society (2006) and editorials for Moscow State Pedagogical University (2001 and 2002).
Zassimova has worked with Catoire’s heirs to create recordings of all of the composer’s piano works (including many hitherto unperformed). Notably, she initiated and performed in the only existing recording of Catoire’s vocal works, “Poems for Voice and Piano” (with soprano Yana Ivanilova). Zassimova also recorded all Catoire’s works for Violine and piano with Laurent Breuninger (cpo/SWR).
Further solo piano works of Catoire appear on her album Sonata Reminiscenza.
The Catoire Music Initiative was founded in Hamburg in 2017.
Contact
For Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway & Sweden), the UK and Ireland please contact:
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