Anda Anastasescu Gritten

Anda Anastasescu Gritten John Gritten and Anda Anastasescu GrittenAwarded the decoration Commander of the Order of Cultural Merit by the President of Romania in 2004, Anda Anastasescu was one of the four women selected in the arts in Great Britain in 2003 to receive the European Women of Achievement Certificate ‘in recognition of an outstanding contribution to pan-European understanding and progress that provides an inspiration to others’. In 2013, she received from the Romanian Embassy in London the accolade of Romanian of the Year.

Awarded First Prize unanimously by the jury of the Debussy International Piano Competition in Paris presided over by composer Georges Auric, Anda Anastasescu has performed on five continents in prestigious festivals and concert halls and her performances have been consistently praised for their artistry, sensitivity, passion and imagination.

She was born in Bucharest and gave her first public concert performance at nine with Beethoven’s Sechs Leichte Variationen über ein Schweizerlied within a year of learning the piano. After graduating from the city’s music conservatoire, she studied in Paris and London, and attended conducting masterclasses and courses on the phenomenology of music with Sergiu Celibidache. In 1989, she formed The London Schubert Players Chamber Orchestra as the orchestra-in-residence of the French Institute in London. With them, she pioneered British music overseas and introduced works by foreign composers to Britain. In 1990, soon after the Romanian Revolution, Anda took the orchestra to Romania on a concert tour to raise funds, bring gifts and moral support to the hundreds of Romanian orphans and disadvantaged children in State care. In parallel with public concerts in major halls, the orchestra gave mini-concerts for the children in the centres’ gymnasia.

Anda Anastasescu has performed with the BBC, the European Community Chamber and the Salzburg Mozarteum Musiziergemeinschaft orchestras, with the philharmonic orchestras of the former Soviet Union and Romania, as well as orchestras in the USA and the Far East. She worked with conductors Yan Pascal Tortelier, Lim Yau, Sian Edwards and Mircea Cristescu; was honoured to share the stage with Martha Argerich and Sir Willard White; and performed chamber music with principal players of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, The Philharmonia, the London Sinfonietta and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

As a soloist, she has performed in leading venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, Kings Place, St John’s Smith Square (London); CBSO Centre (Birmingham); Winter Gardens (Bournemouth); Athenaeum Barcelona; Athenaeum Bucharest; Hjertnes (Sandefjord, Norway); Cecilia Meireles (Rio de Janeiro); Serghei Lunchevici (Kishinev, Moldova) and the historic Palace of Culture in Targu Mures, Romania.

She has given many UK and worldwide first performances of works by the revered Romanian composers Constantin Silvestri, George Enescu and Dinu Lipatti. In 1999 she was invited to première Lipatti’s Sinfonia Concertante in performances conducted by Sir Yehudi Menuhin in London, Paris and Geneva. Her successive performances in the Wigmore Hall established Silvestri as a ‘composer awaiting thorough investigation’ (International Piano).

As President of the Constantin Silvestri International Foundation she established in the UK the Silvestri Scholarships – awarded yearly to 16-year-old Romanian musicians to study in Britain. In Romania, she founded the Constantin Silvestri International Festival and Competition under the patronage of Sir Yehudi Menuhin and initiated the Silvestri Mini-PROMS.

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