Born in Kazan, Russia, Anna Petrova began playing piano at the age of five, taking up
the violin two years later. Her musical talent and first successful performances during
her childhood and youth (1st Prize at the Moscow National Youth Competition 1995)
made it possible for her to continue her studies at the P. I. Tchaikovsky State
Conservatory School of Music in Moscow, where she received her Diploma of Arts and
Education in 2001. Anna Petrova has been living in Munich, Germany since 2002,
where she was enrolled as a graduate student in the Richard Strauss Conservatory
under Professor Urs Stiehler. She is also collaborating in various projects with Wolfram
Graul, head of Audio Engineering at the Bavarian State Broadcasting Corporation.
She has participated in numerous master classes given by, among others, Michael
Kopelman, Zakar Bron and Aaron Rosen at the International Academy of Music, New
York, and with Boris Kuschnir at the Queen Elisabeth Master Class. In addition to her
chamber music activities, Anna Petrova also plays in several symphony orchestras and
has given solo performances of violin concerts by J.S.Bach, W.A.Mozart and Felix
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Anna Petrova performs on an Italian violin made by Giovanni
Florentus Guidantus, Bologna, in the 18th century.
Yorick-Alexander Abel, son of a Cuban mother and German father, received his first
violin lessons from John Snow in Brussels at the age of five. Some years later he
began his cello studies under Young-Chang Cho in Cologne, continuing them later with
Nelly Moser in Bonn. After 1995 he studied in France at the Conservatoire National de
Versailles, where he was awarded two gold medals and two honors prizes for cello and
chamber music by unanimous decision of the jury. In 1998, the competition jury of the
renowned École Normale de Musique de Paris /Alfred Cortot unanimously awarded him
with the prestigious Concert Diploma in the Cello and Chamber Music disciplines.
He has participated in numerous master classes under Bernhard Greenhouse, Arto
Noras, Alexander Rudin, Michael Hell and Jean Françaix, and regularly attended
courses with Konrad von Abel, former assistant to Sergiu Celibidache. Since 2002
Yorick-Alexander Abel lives and teaches in Munich, where he occasionally collaborates
with Jan Polasek. He frequently gives solo and chamber music performances at festivals
and concert halls in many countries, including Germany, France, the Netherlands,
Belgium, the USA, Mexico, Cuba, Martinique, French Guyana, Armenia and Tunisia.