Biography
Maria was born in 1986 into a family of famous Moscow musicians and started performing on the concert stage as early as at the age of five. She graduated with honors from the Shalyapin Music School and the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music, and completed an assistantship at the Schnittke Institute of Music in Moscow in 2013. In the same year, she entered the Lucerne Higher School of Music (Switzerland) in the class of Professor Konstantin Lifschitz, where she graduated in 2016 with the highest score for her performing skills and where she worked for several years as an assistant professor. In 2020, Maria graduated from the world-renowned Piano Academy at Lake Como (Italy).
The foreign press enthusiastically calls Maria Anikina "the musical embodiment of sincerity, poetry and inner will", "Like a storyteller and artist with a rich palette of colors, she has carried away through endless multifaceted landscapes on the pages of music, thanks to her supreme pianistic skill" ("Luzern Zeitung", Switzerland). The French “Le petit journal” is not stingy with praise either: "Maria instantly captured the attention of the entire audience. Her very concentrated performance captured the meaning of the piece; the sound was lively and full of light." Weggiszeitung writes: "She is unquestionably the most gifted and brilliant pianist of our time.
The foreign press enthusiastically calls Maria Anikina "the musical embodiment of sincerity, poetry and inner will", "Like a storyteller and artist with a rich palette of colors, she has carried away through endless multifaceted landscapes on the pages of music, thanks to her supreme pianistic skill" ("Luzern Zeitung", Switzerland). The French “Le petit journal” is not stingy with praise either: "Maria instantly captured the attention of the entire audience. Her very concentrated performance captured the meaning of the piece; the sound was lively and full of light." Weggiszeitung writes: "She is unquestionably the most gifted and brilliant pianist of our time.
Maria regularly gives concerts in renowned halls throughout the world, such as the KKL (Lucerne), Notre-Dame de Sion (Istanbul), the Great Hall of the Conservatory (Moscow), as well as at various concert venues in Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Russia and Ukraine. She performs with the major symphony and chamber orchestras, including the Luzern Sinfonieorchester (LSO), Philharmonie Zentralschweiz, "Orchestra'Sion, and others.
Maria Anikina has been a prize-winner at 11 international piano competitions, including the Giorgos Thymis, International Piano Competition (Thessaloniki, Greece). She has been awarded the Golden Parnassus Award at the International Piano Competition in Sanok, Poland. She has won the Hella Siegrist Scholarship in Lucerne and the Swiss Federal Scholarship in Bern, Switzerland, three times. An absolute winner at international piano competitions in Kostroma and "Musica Classica" in Ruza (Russia), where she was also awarded a special prize for the best performance of Spanish music.
Maria takes part in many renowned music festivals, among them the Lucerne Festival, the Prague Spring International Music Festival, the Menton Festival and others.
Maria takes part in many renowned music festivals, among them the Lucerne Festival, the Prague Spring International Music Festival, the Menton Festival and others.