“Music is a constant part of my life”. This is how Anna Skryleva – the award winning conductor, composer, pianist and synaesthete – describes her work, with which she has made a name for herself on the international stage in recent years. The cosmopolitan began playing the piano as a child and composed her first piece at the age of eight. Since then, as a composing conductor, she has been committed to pushing the boundaries of the traditional with creativity, prudence and depth: “For me, the primary goal is to be able to perform theatre and art on an equal footing with reality.”
Anna Skryleva is currently the General Music Director at Magdeburg Theatre and is enthusiastically committed to expanding the current orchestral and operatic repertoire. Her rediscovery and world premiere of Eugen Engel’s opera “Grete Minde” in 2022 caused an international sensation and is considered a discovery of the century. The production of “Grete Minde” was nominated for the International Opera Awards 2022; In a remarkable achievement, Anna Skryleva and Magdeburg Philharmonic have won the prestigious Opus Klassik award 2024 for World Premiere Recording of the Year and were nominated for Opus Klassik award 2024 as the Best Opera Recording of the Year. Skryleva received the special “Innovative Orchestra 2019” award from the German Orchestra Foundation for her tireless efforts.
As a conductor, her training has taken her through the classic stages of a general music director: from solo pianist to positions as a repetiteur, assistant and conductor, with mentors including Simone Young and Julia Jones, as well as the Institute for Women Conductors at the Dallas Opera.
Anna Skryleva regularly works as a guest at renowned opera houses and with outstanding orchestras, including the Hamburg State Opera, the Royal Swedish Opera, the Dallas Opera, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony orchestra, the Copenhagen Philharmonic and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. In the 2024/2025 season, she is working on two new productions at the Leipzig Opera: Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” and Tchaikovsky’s “Pique Dame”.
The conductor also works closely with international soloists and singers such as Andreas Schager, Camilla Nylund and Vida Miknevičute, violinist Arabella Steinbacher, pianists Lucas & Arthur Jussen and horn player Felix Klieser.
Anna Skryleva’s versatile repertoire spans the Viennese classical era of Mozart and Beethoven, German and Russian Romanticism from Tchaikovsky to Wagner and Strauss, as well as Italian “bel canto” and “verismo” of Rossini, Verdi and Puccini. As a conductor, she also pays special attention to the music of the 20th century with a focus on Britten, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, as well as contemporary music. In close collaboration with composers such as Lera Auerbach, Konstantia Gourzi and Elena Kats-Chernin, Anna Skryleva continues to create groundbreaking projects; in 2025, she will perform at the Ultraschall Festival together with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.
Since she was accepted into the composition class at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory at the age of only ten, Anna Skryleva has worked steadily as a composer; her works are published by Universal Edition Vienna. She has created several opera and orchestral arrangements for the theatres in Magdeburg and Winterthur, including Mozart’s “La clemenza di Tito” and Wagner’s prelude to the opera “Lohengrin”. In 2023, “Lullaby” was created for two voices and orchestra, which had its world premiere in Magdeburg. Two further world premieres took part in May and June 2024: “3 Impromptus in C” in the orchestral version with the Augsburg Philharmonic Orchestra and “Mirror” for soprano and orchestra with the Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra. “Mirror” is based on the “Solresol” language, in which each musical motif is assigned a specific word. The work is based on a poem that Skryleva wrote in 2021 – in her composition, the music is triggered and shaped by words.
Anna Skryleva is not only committed to music, but also to society: in 2014, she founded the international peace initiative “CLASSIC FOR PEACE” (CFP), with which the versatile artist aims to promote international understanding through classical music.