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’. Shostakovich’s Dances of the Dolls make me think of the Soviet cartoons of my childhood’, says Anna Vinnitskaya. ‘They also remind me of Mozart: they are as bright as diamonds, sincere and beautiful.’ The Zirkustänze (Circus Dances) composed by Jörg Widmann in 2012, a brilliant kaleidoscope of emotions and parodies, round off the programme.

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 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.

Serge Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto might never have seen the light of day had it not been for hypnosis: before the twenty-seven-year-old composer began work on it, he was on his last legs – financially, artistically and psychologically. Dr Nikolay Dahl hypnotised his patient every day, whispering to him: ‘You will write your concerto. You will work with great fluency. The concerto will be of excellent quality.’ The creative block disappeared, and the concerto’s premiere in Moscow in 1901 was a triumph for Rachmaninov, who played the solo part himself. Anna Vinnitskaya says she feels ‘a spring-like atmosphere’ in this work: throughout there is a sense of movement, of awakening. The music passes through the most contrasting psychological landscapes, but moves towards clarity and light. Rachmaninov composed the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 1934, ten years before his death. Brahms, Liszt, Lutosławski and Andrew Lloyd Webber are among the remarkable roll call of composers inspired by Paganini’s theme.