Anna Gourari

“The Russian composers are incredibly important to me as they transmit the Russian way of thinking and feeling. This is a very particular way which is only to be found in this cultural context, an extreme connection between erudite thoughts and ecstatic feelings.”   Anna Gourari is one of the most outstanding pianists of her generation. Her playing has been described as “technically perfect” and “dazzling”, an “almost perfect blend of fiery attack and poetic magic” combined with “pure intellectual freedom”. Gourari was born in Kazan, Russia. Her parents were both teachers at the Kazan Music Academy and Anna began piano lessons at the age of five, and from 1979 attended a special school for gifted children in her home town. Later she attended several master classes with Professor Vera Gornostaeva at the Moscow Conservatory.
In 1986, Gourari won first prize in the Kabalevsky Competition in Russia; four years later, she won first prize at the first International Chopin Competition in Göttingen. That same year, she moved to Germany and continued her piano studies with Ludwig Hoffmann und Gitti Pirner in Munich. In 1994, Gourari won the Clara Schumann Piano Competition in Düsseldorf – Jury: Martha Argerich, Alexis Weissenberg, Nelson Freire, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Joachim Kaiser a.o. –, which led to appearances at major concert venues and major orchestras around the world, including performances with such leading conductors as Sir Colin Davis, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Kirill Petrenko and Iván Fischer.
Anna Gourari made her ECM debut in 2012 with Canto Oscuro, an album featuring works by Bach/Busoni, Hindemith, Gubaidulina and Bach/Siloti. The Boston Globe reviewer wrote: “This smartly crafted and beautifully performed recital by pianist Anna Gourari unfolds like a history of Bach’s enduring influence in the 20th century” and praised the pianist’s “opulent tone and remarkable fluidity”. Her next release, Visions Fugitives, coupled Prokofiev’s eponymous work with Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor and the Fairy Tale in F minor by Medtner. Music Web Internationalhailed this recital as “a rich feast of superbly recorded piano.” Film director Werner Herzog cast Gourari in the lead part in his film Invincible, in which she portrays a pianist. The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2001. Composers have dedicated works to her, including Jörg Widmann’s Piano Sonata “Fleur du Mal” as well as “Diary – Seven Pieces for piano” by Rodion Shchedrin whose foundation awarded Gourari the Shchedrin/Plisetskaya Chamber Music Award. Her highly acclaimed recordings led to her winning the Deutsche Phonoakademie’s ECHO Klassik as Up-and-coming Musician of the Year and Instrumentalist of the Year. For her highly successful Brahms recording of the late piano pieces opp. 116-119 she was awarded the Diapason d’Or.