Anna Vilenskaya in Germany from 10 to 12 May 2024

Anna Vilenskaya is a musicologist, lecturer and researcher of contemporary music.

Anna started giving lectures when she was still studying at the Conservatoire. There, lectures about music were given professionally, but with a flavour of snobbery and museum historicism. She wanted to change the approach of music storytelling towards visualisation, simplicity, emotionality and practicality for the listener. It all worked out, and from 2018 to 2022 Anna gave lectures first in bars in St Petersburg, then in libraries, and then in theatres and museums in various Russian cities.

People loved these lectures, Anna was included in the list of 30 most influential people in Russia who are under 30, she made her show with Warner music Russia and read author's cycles in philharmonics. With the outbreak of full-scale war, Anna left with her husband to Tbilisi and now works there. Now Anna does not give lectures in philharmonic halls but in private centres and organisations, she also works in a school and teaches people all over the world how to give lectures with her video course.

The topic of the lecture in Berlin: Music in Western Europe after the Second World War

In this lecture we will try to understand how the musical world was rebuilt after the war, what themes and genres excited people and healed their souls. Let's take only the music of Western Europe, which existed under free market conditions. What did composers in the occupied territories write? Were new genres born in the 1950s? How quickly did composers begin to reflect on what had happened, or did they decide to turn away from the subject of war altogether? In general, let us trace what was happening in the music of the FRG and the rest of Europe in the 1950s and 1960s.