ANASTASIA KOBEKINA & PALOMA KOUIDER

ANASTASIA KOBEKINA

Coming from Yekaterinburg, Anastasia Kobekina was born into a musician family in 1994. She began cello studies at the age of four and gave her first concert with orchestra at the age of six. Following an extremely promising start to her career, Anastasia has performed with major orchestras, such as the Russian National Orchestra, the Moscow Virtuosi, the Mariinsky Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Kremerata Baltica.
Anastasia has worked with many renowned conductors, including Vladimir Spivakov, Krzysztov Penderecki, Heinrich Schiff, and Valery Gergiev. She has also performed as a soloist on such prestigious stages as the Konzerthaus Berlin, New York’s Lincoln Center, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, and the Bolshoi Theatre. After earning her diploma at the Moscow Central Music School in 2012, she continued her studies as a young soloist at the prestigious Kronberg Academy in Germany under Frans Helmerson, funded by the Steigenberger/Rath Scholarship. As talent isn’t dependent upon age, Anastasia has already played chamber music with some of the leading figures in classical music, like Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Fazil Say, Denis Matsuev, Vladimir Spivakov, and András Schiff. Anastasia has won several competitions, including the Landgraf von Hessen Award and the Boris Pergamenschikow Scholarship at the Kronberg Academy in Germany. She was a finalist in the Eurovision Young Musicians competition in Vienna, a semi-finalist at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 2015, the same year that she won the Verbier Festival Academy award in Switzerland and first prize at the TONALi Music Competition in Hamburg. After hearing her in the Haydn Concerto at the Annecy Classic Festival in 2014, in a performance conducted by Vladimir Spivakov, Pascal Escande decided to invite her to the Auvers-sur-Oise Festival the following year, along with her friend, pianist Anna Fedorova, winner of the AVC Charity Foundation’s Denis Antoine Prize at the Piano Campus international competition, in order to record her first DVD on the DiscAuverS label.
That DVD was a great success, and the word of Anastasia’s extraordinary talent began to get around the music world. That’s when Renaud Capuçon invited her to the 18th “Sommets Musicaux” in Gstaad, where she was awarded both the Thierry Scherz Prize, sponsored by the Fondation Pro Scientia et Arte, and the André Hoffman Prize. A few months later, Renaud Capuçon invited her to the 6th Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival, where Anastasia played Rachmaninov’s Sonata in G minor with pianist Jérôme Ducros and was showered with praise from the national press, which viewed her as the great revelation of that year’s festival.
2018 has also been a very successful year, with particularly exciting plans for October. At the Cello Biennale in Amsterdam, Anastasia will play Giovanni Sollima’s Antidotum Tarantulae XXI (Concerto for Two Cellos and Orchestra) with the composer and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. Then, on October 11, 2018, she will appear at Salle Cortot in Paris for the official release of her first CD, produced by DiscAuverS, performing alongside pianist Paloma Kouider in a program featuring the works of Myaskovsky, Franck, and Stravinsky.
After studying in Professor Jens Peter Maintz’s class in Berlin, Anastasia Kobekina is currently pursuing a master’s degree at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris, under the instruction of Jérôme Pernoo.
Anastasia plays a 1745 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini cello.

PALOMA KOUIDER

« It is splendid with intelligence, with musical sense, with personality. A true discovery. » (Gérard Manonni, Classica)

Awarded « Révélation Classique » by Adami, laureate of the « Fondation Banque Populaire », the French pianist Paloma Kouider studied wih Serguei Markarov in Paris and Elisso Wirssaladze in Firenze before receiving the advice of Avedis Kouyoumdjian at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna.
Soon performing in renowned festivals, she did not forget to cultivate her other passion, Literature, which she studied in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. A passion that is shared by her colleagues of the Trio Karénine, winner, among other awards, of the 62nd ARD Competition in Münich and today formed by violonist Fanny Robilliard and cellist Louis Rodde.
Some outstanding musical personalities durably inspired her musical path : the Ysaÿe Quartet, Hatto Beyerle, Menahem Pressler, Ferenc Rados, Jean-Claude Pennetier, Alfred Brendel as well as Claude Helffer regarding contemporary music and Stéphane Béchy for the interpretation of baroque music.
Current and upcoming highlights include concerts in Paris’ Auditorium du Louvre, Salle Pleyel, London’s Wigmore Hall, Saint-Petersburg’s Philharmonia, Hamburg’s Laeiszhall, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Venice’s Palazetto Bru Zane… She regularly appears at international festivals such as Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Menton, Radio-France Montpellier, Aix-en-Provence, Saint-Petersburg Piano Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron, Tokyo’s Crazy Days… With her trio, she also took part to the prestigious ARTE program « Stars Von Morgen » in Berlin. The three musicians were awarded the prestigious « NORDMETALL – Prize » by the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festspiele.
Paloma premieres new music and works with composers like Fazil Say, Benoît Menut, Philippe Hersant, Eric Tanguy and Jean-Frédéric Neuburger. Together with cellist Anastasia Kobekina, she was awarded « André Hoffmann Prize » by Gstaad’s Sommets musicaux for the best interpretation of Benjamin Attahir’s piece « After the ineffable ».
Paloma’s recording of Beethoven’s sonatas and Liszt’s Rhapsodies was awarded 5 Diapasons and 4 stars by Classica in addition of very enthusiastic critics. This year, she released a violin/piano recital with Fanny Robilliard on Evidence Classics and a French music programme with her trio on Mirare.
Involved in charity projects aiming at creating opportunities through the arts, she founded together with two friends a non-profit organization named « Esperanz’Arts ».