Canadian-born classical pianist Anastasia Rizikov is bringing a program she’s calling Continuum to Toronto’s Trinity-St. Paul’s centre on January 10. The concert is subtitled “Not a Piano Recital — a continuum of human emotion” and incorporates music from Bach to Silvestrov and Fasil Say.
Born in Toronto to Ukrainian parents, Anastasia has made her home in Paris, France, for several years.
We caught up with her to talk about the upcoming Toronto concert and more.
Anastasia Rizikov
Anastasia Rizikov was born in Toronto, and began studying music at the age of five at the Nadia Music Academy. She won a string of top prizes at local music competitions in the GTA, including the Markham Music Festival, Yips Music Festival, and North York Music Festival, among several others.
Anastasia also won first prize at both the Canadian Music Competition (CMC) and the Canadian Chopin Competition. The latter led to a gala performance at Koerner Hall. The Glenn Gould Foundation awarded a C1X Yamaha baby grand piano to the “outstanding young pianist Anastasia Rizikov. Ms. Rizikov has the piano on an indefinite loan-basis to aid in her artistic and career development” in December 2012, on the occasion of Glenn Gould’s 80th Anniversary Year and his GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award. That year, she was also awarded the 2013 Debut Atlantic concert tour.
More prize wins would follow, including 3rd Prizes at 6th Tbilisi International Piano Competition and 63rd Maria Canals International Music Competition, along with special prizes “For the best foreign performer of a Georgian Composer’s work” (Tbilisi, Georgia, 2017), “Special Prize to the youngest semi-finalist”, “Special Prize to the best performance of Isaac Albeniz’s music’, and “Special Prize to the best performance of Frederic Mompou’s music”, (Barcelona, Spain, 2017).
She went on to continue her studies at the École Normale de Musique de Paris in France, where she earned her Diplôme Supérieur de Concertiste. Anastasia furthered her studies with master classes with a range of prominent pianists, including Sergei Babayan, Vladimir Feltsman, Awadagin Pratt, Arie Vardi, Robert Levin, Ferenc Rados, Anatoly Ryabov, and Oxana Yablonskaya. She has also worked with András Schiff, Emanuel Ax, Menahem Pressler, Gabor Takács-Nagy, and Olga Kern.
Anastasia has performed with orchestras across North America and beyond, including the Northwest Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Plymouth Symphony Orchestra (Michigan Philharmonic), Toronto Sinfonietta, International Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Baleares ‘Ciudad de Palma’, National Academy Orchestra of Canada, Sinfonia Toronto, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Michigan Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra London Canada, Symphony Nova Scotia, Northumberland Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Laval, and the National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, among others.
Anastasia Rizikov performs Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in E minor, BWV 914 live in January 2024 by Arpeggio Films at L’eclaireur Herold in Paris, France:
Anastasia Rizikov: The Interview
“I moved to Europe when I was 18. It’s been almost ten years that I’ve been living in Paris,” Anastasia says. “I do consider myself Parisian at this point.”
Having begun her career in Toronto, she’s noticed differences between the audiences she encounters now that her music practice is based in Europe.
“I feel like the European audiences in general have a broader taste in terms of the kind of classical music that they like to listen to,” she says.
The Program
She’s carefully chosen the pieces to include in her Toronto concert. They are:
- J.S. Bach: Partita in C Minor BWV 826
- F. Schubert / F. Liszt — Lieder: Gretchen am Spinnrade & Erlkönig
- V. Silvestrov / A. Rizikov: Farewell, O World, Farewell, O Earth
- G. Mahler / A. Rizikov: Adagietto from Symphony No. 5
- E. Block / A. Rizikov: From Jewish Life
- F. Say: Black Earth
- I. Shamo-Hutsul: Watercolours
- M. Skoryk / A. Rizikov: Carpathian Rhapsody
The works were chosen with purpose.
“There’s definitely a very broad, but at the same time personal, journey that’s going on,” Anastasia says. “Each composer and each work represents a very important point either in my personal life, or my upbringing, my cultural background,” she explains.
Along with her Ukrainian heritage, her family has Jewish roots, she explains.
“But then there’s also Bach on the program,” she says. “Bach has always, always been a very important, a key role in my repertoire, in my studies. It was very important to include him in the program.”
The title of her recital, Continuum, frames the program as a kind of journey.
“I present it as a musical journey that continues on form the 17th century up to the present time.”
From its beginning with Bach, the journey continues with the Schubert/Liszt Lieder. It also recalls student days and her earlier music studies, but she wanted to veer away from the a program full of Chopin studies and pieces like Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody, once staples in the concert scene.
“These kinds of programs are simply uninteresting for the public” she says. Modern audiences are looking for more than showmanship. “The audience needs to feel connection with the artist,” she explains. “When you play music that is personal to yourself, it translates to the audience. They feel it more intensely.”
The program is one she’s just put together. “It’s a very new program, but in my head it works very well.”
On her way to a meeting during the interview, she points out that she’s passing by the offices of Warner Music France as she talks. Rizikov has recorded albums with the Warner Classics label.
“The Bach and the Schubert I’ve played for a long time, but the rest of the program has been curated spontaneously,” she explains.
Anastasia Rizikov performs Lyapunov’s Etude Transcendante No. 10, Op. 11 “Lezghinka” in Salle Colonne in Paris, August 2023:
Making Arrangements
About half of the program consists of works that she’s arranging for piano herself, including music by Silvestrov, Mahler, Block, and Skyork.
“The reason I decided to do a lot of arrangements, on the one hand, I’m so fortunate to be a pianist, because here is no repertoire that I can’t [do],” she explains. But, she wanted to expand on the idea of performing repertoire that was specifically written for the piano.
Valentin Silvestrov’s Farewell, O World, Farewell, O Earth is the fourth movement from his 1999 work Requiem for Larissa, a tribute to his late wife. It was a piece Larissa wanted to expand on pianistically, although it is written as a choral work.
“Every time I hear it, and every time I play it, I have chills going down my spine,” she says.
Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 has a similarly emotional impact. “There’s a reason why Leonard Bernstein was buried with the 5th Symphony of Mahler,” Rizikov says. “It’s incredible music.”
Arranging symphonic and choral works for piano requires an understanding of the instrument.
“We have to on one hand to understand he limits of the piano as a percussive instrument,” she explains. “But, I happen to have a lot of experience playing with orchestras, but also playing with choral ensembles, and conducting,” she adds.
The Block and Skoryk works were among the most challenging to arrange. “My goal in arranging these pieces is to turn something from 2D to 3D.,” Anastasia adds.
“Indeed, it’s not a very easy task. The piano cannot sing words, but the music, in the case of this Silvestrov piece, the music is so hauntingly beautiful that I feel like the words aren’t even necessary,” she says.
“Silvestrov is able to tell a very gut wrenching story. It’s a song of somebody who is leaving this earth, and everybody is saying their goodbyes.”
The piece also links to her Ukrainian heritage. “Music is important to play these days from a political standpoint as well,” Rizikov begins. “It’s very important to bring to light Ukrainian music.”
It’s something she’s been emphasizing in her repertoire for some time. “I’ve always been one to play a lot of Eastern European music, including Russian music,” she says. “I feel like it’s hard to play Russian music these days. It doesn’t sit right with me.”
Part of her goal is also to play the work of relatively unknown composers.
“I’m pretty sure that composers like Shamo, for example, [is someone] that people haven’t heard of.” She points out that Shamo is known largely for a pop song he wrote, “Kyieve Mii” (My Kyiv). His main oeuvre, however, lies in the classical realm.
“Watercolours I think is a brilliant work,” she says, mentioning the influence of Debussy. “[There’s] nothing quite like it. There’s some colours in this music that I don’t think I’ve ever heard of.”
It leads to Skoryk’s piece, which incorporates musical idioms of the Carpathian mountains. She points out also that the Hutsul scale (the Hutsuls being an East Slavic ethnic group of the Carpathian highlands), also known as the Ukrainian Dorian scale, also overlaps with Jewish music. “They have so much in common.”
She knows Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say personally, having recorded his Four Cities (Dört Şehir), Op. 41, with cellist Lisa Strauss on the Warner label in 2024. It was a piece she’d performed multiple times live.
“This is a very extraordinary individual who likes to combine musical textures,” she says of Say. The work in her concert program, Black Earth, involves playing from inside the piano, creating a sound similar to the Turkish duduk, a double-reeded woodwind instrument.
A Journey In Concert
Rizikov is aiming to offer her audience a mix when it comes to concert experiences.
“I think it’s a concert with a pretty healthy combination of pieces that are very virtuosic, but also, on the other hand, are very spiritual, are very deep and philosophical,” she says.
“There’s a bit of everything in this concert.”
The concert takes place January 10 at Jeanne Lamon Hall in the Trinity-St Paul’s centre.
- Find concert details and tickets [HERE].
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