Prokofiev: Violin and Piano Sonatas Alexandra Conunova & Michail Lifits

• Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): Violin and Piano Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 80:
• 1Violin and Piano Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 80: I. Andante06:40
• 2Violin and Piano Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 80: II. Allegro brusco06:52
• 3Violin and Piano Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 80: III. Andante07:09
• 4Violin and Piano Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 80: IV. Allegrissimo07:08
• Violin and Piano Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 94a:
• 5Violin and Piano Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 94a: I. Moderato07:57
• 6Violin and Piano Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 94a: II. Scherzo. Allegro04:39
• 7Violin and Piano Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 94a: III. Andante03:29
• 8Violin and Piano Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 94a: IV. Allegro con brio07:23
• Total Runtime51:17

Info for Prokofiev: Violin and Piano Sonatas

From shadow to light, this is the emotional curve of Sergei Prokofiev's Sonatas for violin and piano, published in the 1940s. this was an intense period of creation for the Russian musician who was also working on his ballet Cinderella and his Fifth Symphony.

The violinist Alexandra Conunova, winner of the prestigious Tchaikovsky competition in 2015, and the pianist Michael Lifits are engaged in reading these two Prokofiev scores. A true synthesis of his style, these sonatas are characterized by a formal classicism subverted by a flamboyant virtuosity. Their lyricism, gnawed by the tasty and biting irony of a modern language, fruit of a critical vision of the world, is all the more poignant.

Alexandra Conunova, violin
Michael Lifits, piano

Alexandra Conunova
attracted public and critical acclaim when she won First Prize at the Joseph Joachim Violin Competition in Hanover in the autumn 2012. She was praised by the jury for her vivid tone and her highly virtuoso dramatic art and Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that she "shows with what radiance of tone she is able to endow her music-making. Her interpretations of Bach’s baroque dances are sometimes austere and yet wonderfully cantabile, at other times truly dance-like or – as in the Bourrée – with a high degree of virtuosity".

Alexandra’s current season include concerts at the Collonge-Bellerive Festival, Festival International de Colmar, Festival de Pâques, La folle journée, Rencontres Muiscales d'Evian,Elba Isola Musicale d'Europa, Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, Schloss Elmau, Stars on Baikal and others. She will perform with Camerata Bern, the China Philharmonic orchestra, the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra,the Irkutsk Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mariinski Orchestra, the National Philharmonic of Russia, the Orchestre National du Capitole, the Orchestra I pomeriggi musicali, the Rundfunk Philharmonic Orchestra, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and the Moscow Soloists. Alexandra will do her U.S. concert debut in January 2017 and a Japan tour is planed in July with the National Philharmonic of Russia under the baton of Yuri Simonov

Alexandra has won major prizes at competitions such as the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition, the 2015 Singapore International Violin Competition, the 2011 George Enescu International Violin Competition as well as at Tibor Varga (2010), Ion Voicu (2009)and Henri Marteau (2008). Alexandra was awarded the Julius Bär Prize for the most accomplished artist of the Verbier Festival Academy 2013. In 2015 Alexandra received the honorific title "Master of Arts" of the Republic of Moldova. Alexandra got awarded the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship 2016

She has established herself as a soloist of a high level. She has performed with orchestras such as the Bucharest Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Berne, China Philharmonic Orchestra, Erfurt Philharmonic Orchestra, George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra, Hungarian State Opera, Hermitage Orchestra St-Petersburg, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Moscow Soloists, Musikkollegium Winterthur, National Philharmonic Orchestra, NDR Radio Philharmonic, Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra, Saarbrücken Symphony Orchestra, Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Wuhan Symphony Orchestra. She has collaborated with conductors including Christian Badea, Yury Bashmet, Teodor Currentzis, Misha Damev, Valery Gergiev, Hannu Lintu, Hubert Soudant, Andrew Matze, Vladimir Spivakov, Yuri Simonov and Gabor Takacs-Nagy.

Alexandra is also a devoted chamber musician. She regularly collaborates with artists such as Nicolas Altstaedt, Lera Auerbach, Boris Brovtsyn, Gérard Caussé, Renaud Capuçon, Finghin Collins, Blythe Teh Engstroem, Ilya Gringlots, David Kadouch, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Yura Lee, Michail Lifits, Alexander Melnikov, Paul Meyer, Edgar Moreau, Gordan Nikolic, Andreas Ottensamer, Anne Queffélec, Julien Quentin, Alexei Stadler,Christian Tetzlaff, Kirill Troussov, Istvan Vardai, Pretty Yende, Tabea Zimmermann and others.

Alexandra was born in 1988 in the Republic of Moldova and took up the violin at the age of six. She studied with Professor Petru Munteanu at the University of Music in Rostock, with Professor Krzysztof Wegrzyn at the University of Music in Hannover and with Professor Renaud Capuçon at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne. She has received taken additional classes with Ivry Gitlis , Igor Oistrakh, Igor Ozim and others. She currently plays the Santo-Seraphin Violin, dated 1735, Venezia, kindly loaned by the "Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben".

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