ABOUT
"What is most captivating is the expressiveness of her playing and her impressive presence, which makes her the self-evident center of the action; she lives "her" music. "Her" is intentionally chosen because she makes the music entirely her own. She never delivers, but brings to life. Stylistically she is absolutely confident; her personal cadenza in the Mozart concerto and her sovereign conducting from the piano clearly prove that."
(Valérie Groß, Deutsche Grammophon - jury's verdict on the occasion of the awarding of the Maria-Ladenburger-Förderpreis 2020)
The 25-year-old conductor and pianist Anna Handler is the first conductor to receive the Juilliard Kovner Fellowship at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York. This covers the full cost of study and living expenses for outstanding classical music students.
Highlights of the current season include her debut at the Salzburg Festival 2022 as director of the Káťa Kabanová Opera Camp. She will also be a guest with the Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra and the Mecklenburg State Orchestra in Schwerin for the 2023 New Year's Concert. As founder and director of the Ensemble Enigma Classica, she regularly performs with outstanding soloists such as Arabella Steinbacher and Sabine Meyer.
Anna Handler has already worked with world-famous conductors and orchestras. She assisted Kirill Petrenko and conducted the incidental music for the concert opera production Mazeppa with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. She was also Daniel Harding's assistant with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at "Klassik am Odeonsplatz" in Munich.
At the Bavarian State Opera, she assisted Oksana Lyniv in the opera productions "Mauerschau" and "Greek" and, at the age of 23, took over the musical direction of the youth production EVA AND ADAM, which premiered as part of the 2019 Munich Opera Festival.
As a prizewinner of the International Hans von Bülow Competition in the discipline "Conducting from the Piano," she made her debut with the Meininger Hofkapelle in 2018, performing Mozart's Piano Concerto K. 488. She was awarded the Maria Ladenburger Förderpreis for Music in the Chamber Music Hall of the Beethoven House in Bonn, in cooperation with WDR, the Cusanuswerk Foundation and Deutsche Grammophon. She also received the Rising Star Award from the Initiativkreis Mönchengladbach and the European Cultural Foundation Europamusicale.
Anna Handler was born in 1996, has German-Colombian roots and grew up in Munich. As a pianist, she studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, among other places. From 2018 to July 2021, she studied orchestral conducting with Prof. Nicolás Pasquet and Prof. Ekhart Wycik at the Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT Weimar. She is currently completing her Master's degree in orchestral conducting at the Juilliard School in New York with Prof. David Robertson.
"Anyone who wants to observe what is possible in terms of direct communication between an orchestra and its conductor must hear the Ensemble Enigma Classica under its founder Anna Handler. Every encouraging smile, every sharp look, every stimulating gesture leads to an immediately audible consequence in the excellent young musicians, who pay attention to their conductor as if hypnotized. But the Munich native, not yet in her mid-twenties, is infinitely more than a motivational coach: her conducting technique is impeccable." Michael Bastian Weiß, Abendzeitung München, 21.20.2020
Pressarticle:
CONCERTS
The trilogy that started with NOAH and continued with MOSES now proceeds with a project series that tackles religious thematic stories. For the third part of the cooperation with young people that have fled to or are native to Munich we go back to the origins of human history. In the creation myth a world view is constructed, in which an Almighty Father creates a man as the first human and from his ribs creates a woman for him, who is responsible for the subsequent expulsion from paradise. This Christian story-telling tradition struggles here with the Jewish and Islamic way of representing our origin. Beginning with biographies of young people searching for their place in the world, EVA UND ADAM asks the question about a new start in a strange world and the possibility of an emancipated co-habitation, not just for the two genders, but also for different religious communities. The musical theatre project combines music and arrangements from Joseph Haydn’s Die Schöpfung with new compositions and musical ideas of the young people.
The trilogy that started with NOAH and continued with MOSES now proceeds with a project series that tackles religious thematic stories. For the third part of the cooperation with young people that have fled to or are native to Munich we go back to the origins of human history. In the creation myth a world view is constructed, in which an Almighty Father creates a man as the first human and from his ribs creates a woman for him, who is responsible for the subsequent expulsion from paradise. This Christian story-telling tradition struggles here with the Jewish and Islamic way of representing our origin. Beginning with biographies of young people searching for their place in the world, EVA UND ADAM asks the question about a new start in a strange world and the possibility of an emancipated co-habitation, not just for the two genders, but also for different religious communities. The musical theatre project combines music and arrangements from Joseph Haydn’s Die Schöpfung with new compositions and musical ideas of the young people.
The trilogy that started with NOAH and continued with MOSES now proceeds with a project series that tackles religious thematic stories. For the third part of the cooperation with young people that have fled to or are native to Munich we go back to the origins of human history. In the creation myth a world view is constructed, in which an Almighty Father creates a man as the first human and from his ribs creates a woman for him, who is responsible for the subsequent expulsion from paradise. This Christian story-telling tradition struggles here with the Jewish and Islamic way of representing our origin. Beginning with biographies of young people searching for their place in the world, EVA UND ADAM asks the question about a new start in a strange world and the possibility of an emancipated co-habitation, not just for the two genders, but also for different religious communities. The musical theatre project combines music and arrangements from Joseph Haydn’s Die Schöpfung with new compositions and musical ideas of the young people.
The trilogy that started with NOAH and continued with MOSES now proceeds with a project series that tackles religious thematic stories. For the third part of the cooperation with young people that have fled to or are native to Munich we go back to the origins of human history. In the creation myth a world view is constructed, in which an Almighty Father creates a man as the first human and from his ribs creates a woman for him, who is responsible for the subsequent expulsion from paradise. This Christian story-telling tradition struggles here with the Jewish and Islamic way of representing our origin. Beginning with biographies of young people searching for their place in the world, EVA UND ADAM asks the question about a new start in a strange world and the possibility of an emancipated co-habitation, not just for the two genders, but also for different religious communities. The musical theatre project combines music and arrangements from Joseph Haydn’s Die Schöpfung with new compositions and musical ideas of the young people.
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Akademisches Orchester der TU Ilmenau e.V.
Laura Handler, Solovioline
Anna Handler, Leitung
R.Schumann: Ouvertüre, Scherzo und Finale Op. 52
H.Wieniawski: Fantasie brilliante für Solovioline und Orchester Op. 20
J.Haydn: Sinfonie Nr. 104 in D-Dur
