Anna Rakitina began her career as a Violin Player and studied Conducting at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in the class of Professor Stanislav Diachenko. Since 2016, she continues her conducting studies at the College of Music and Theatre in Hamburg.
She participated in masterclasses under Alan Gilbert at the Lucerne Festival Academy (Switzerland), Johannes Schlaefli in Meiningen (Germany), Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Vladimir Jurowski. In 2017, she was Bernard Haitink’s assistant in his masterclass in Lucerne.
During her studies Anna conducted the following stage performances: Eugene Onegin and Iolanta by Tchaikovsky, Aleko by Rachmaninov, The Rape of Lucretia by Britten.
She was a Guest Conductor with the Taiwan National Orchestra in 2017. In 2018 she conducted the Bucharest George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra and the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra.
Anna conducted many German orchestras, including the Cologne Philharmonique, the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the Frankfurt Opera House and Museum’s Orchestra, the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Meiningen Court Orchestra, the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin’s Symphony Orchestra.
She also conducted the Lucerne Festival Strings, the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Northern College of Music Chamber Orchestra (United Kingdom).
She was Second Prize winner of the Malko Competition in Copenhagen (2018), Third Prize winner of the German Conductors’ Award in Cologne (2017) and Third Prize winner of the TSO International Conducting Competition in Taipei (2015).