Biography
Anna Isabella Handler was born in 1996, has German-Colombian roots and grew up in Germany. As a pianist, she studied at the University of Music and Theater in Munich, among others. From 2018 to July 2021, she studied orchestral conducting with Prof. Nicolás Pasquet and Prof. Ekhart Wycik at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar. She is currently completing her master studies in orchestral conducting at the Juilliard School in New York with Prof. David Robertson.
She receives a scholarship from the Liechtenstein International Music Academy and regularly takes part in the intensive music weeks and activities of the academy.
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In 2020, Anna was awarded the "Maria-Ladenburger-Förderpreis für Musik" in the chamber music hall of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, in cooperation with the WDR, the Cusanuswerk Foundation and Deutsche Grammophon. In 2019, she received the "Rising Star Award" from the Initiativkreis Mönchengladbach and the European Cultural Foundation Europamusicale. In 2018, in the discipline of conducting from the piano, she was the first female prizewinner to win the 3rd prize at the "International Hans von Bülow Competition" and made her debut with the Meininger Hofkapelle with Mozart's Piano Concerto KV 488, a concert that she also performed and recorded in 2019 with her ensemble Enigma Classica.
Anna has worked with world-renowned conductors and orchestras. She assisted Kirill Petrenko and conducted the incidental music for the concert opera production Mazeppa with the Berlin Philharmonic. She was also Daniel Harding's assistant with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at Klassik am Odeonsplatz in Munich. At the Bavarian State Opera, she assisted Oksana Lyniv in the opera productions Mauerschau and Greek. At the age of 23, she took over the musical direction of the production Eva and Adam, which premiered at the Munich Opera Festival in 2019.
Anna is the first conductor to receive the Juilliard Kovner Fellowship at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York, which provides full tuition and living expenses for outstanding classical music students. She is a full scholarship holder of the Cusanuswerk e.V. and the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben. In the 2020/21 season, she was a scholarship holder of the Orchestra Academy of the Bergische Symphoniker.