Anna Tsybuleva

Anna Tsybuleva (also Tcybuleva; born 12 August 1990 ) is a Russian classical pianist. She won the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2015. As of 2022, she has released two recordings, including a performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto no. 2 with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

Early life and education Tsybuleva was born in 1990. Her mother, Svetlana Tsybuleva, was a musician and art historian, and her father, a radio physicist. Tsybuleva was raised in Nizhny Arkhyz in Karachay-Cherkessia, Russia. She played the piano from the age of six, at first taught by her mother, and also briefly played the violin. In 2015, she won the Leeds International Piano Competition in the UK, the second woman to do so. The Guardians music critic, Andrew Clements, considered that her "success certainly raised a few eyebrows" and criticised her performance of Brahms's Piano Concerto no. 2, writing that "for all the fluency of her playing, she often seemed incapable of seeing the overall shape of the work, and her role in projecting it, rather than the detail of each passing moment." Erica Worth, editor of the magazine Pianist, considered her performance failed to deliver the "warmth, gravitas, a certain humility, a feeling that one has lived, not to mention a velvety rich tone and utter command over the keyboard" that the concerto requires. The BBC Radio 3 commentator, Lucy Parham, praised her "mature, elegant and communicative reading of this hugely demanding work".

Murray Mclachlan, writing in the International Piano magazine, described her as a "born performer" with "unquestionable qualities as an artist"; he considered that her performance of the Brahms concerto "perhaps lacked gravitas" but added: "there was no doubt that she was thoroughly enjoying every minute. The work was taken by the scruff of the neck and executed with energetic elan, bravura and heart-on-sleeve communication." Mclachlan also praised "her spellbinding, exquisite sounds" in performing Debussy's Préludes.

Commenting on a 2016 recital, the British pianist, Peter Donohoe, called Tsybuleva "one of the very finest young musicians of her generation". He commented on her "unerring sense of breathing and space and an instinct for tempo-appropriatenes in relation to her approach to sound and phrase", and praised the "imagination and integrity" of her interpretations of Schumann's Etudes Symphoniques and Prokofiev's 10 pieces Op 12.

In a Telegraph review of a 2018 performance of Schumann's piano concerto with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, David Fanning writes that Tsybuleva can "float long, lyrical lines with a cushioned singing tone" and "blend rippling passagework with the orchestra", but characterises her playing as "predictable and short on fantasy", and concludes that she "could benefit from scaling up her musical intentions".

Recordings Tsybuleva's debut recording of fantasies by C. P. E. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms was released in 2017. Jed Distler, in a review for Gramophone magazine, praises her "superb pianism and intelligent musicianship", although notes "a little more drive and ferocity" would have improved the fugue of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy. C. P. E BachBeethovenSchubertBrahms Champs Hill Records CHRCD131 2021 Piano Concerto No. 2 Capriccios: in F♯ minor, op. 76/1; in B minor, op. 76/2; in C, op. 76/8 Intermezzos: in E♭, op. 117/1; in A, op. 118/2 Brahms Signum Records Signum 674 Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducted by Ruth Reinhardt