Teachers

Director of the Opera Master Classes Eija Tolpo

Eija Tolpo has a wide experience of TV work as a director, producer, coach and dramaturge. She has also directed operas for 15 years. Eija Tolpo has worked for the Savonlinna Music Academy since 1996. She is a member of the Artistic Board and responsible for the opera training of young international opera singers. Together with baritone Tom Krause, she has been teaching in the Music Academy’s master classes in Savonlinna, Finland as well as in Cairo, Egypt and in Ankara, Turkey. She is also an executive coach in communication of the top leadership of Finnish economy, politics and society.

Eija Tolpo has widely studied drama, expression and communication in Helsinki and at the University of Tampere. At the end of 1980’s, she continued expression and drama studies in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 1990–1992, she finalized her studies in opera directorship at Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, Austria.

In 1978–1992, Eija Tolpo has been a TV-director and couch at the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Since 1992, she has worked as a freelancer among others for the Finnish Commercial TV Channel MTV3. Since 1996, she has been a dramaturge for MTV3 in all the national Parliament elections and the elections for the Finnish Presidency. Since 1996, she has been coaching the news’ anchors of both the Finnish Broadcasting Company and MTV3. She has also act as an adviser and coach for Swedish TV and Estonian TV.

Eija Tolpo has been an assistant director at Vienna Staatsopern, Stockholm Opera, Cologne Opera, Schwetzinger Festival and Savonlinna Opera Festival.

Her own opera productions are such as TV Opera Hund by Gothoni (1995), Opera Sudenmorsian (Wolf’s Bride) by Pylkkänen (1996–97), TV Production of Winterreise by Schubert (Baritone Tom Krause, 1997), Opera Night: A Collection of Operas (1997), Stage Production: Boundless Eros by Motaleff (1997), Carmen by Bizet (1999), The Cunning Little Vixen by Janacek (1999), Rigoletto by Verdi (2001), Cosí van Tutte by Mozart (2003) and Curlew River by Britten (2006). She has also directed and dramatized many concerts such as Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch.

Currently, Eija Tolpo prepares for directing the Opera Prodigal Son by Britten which is in the program of the Naantali Music Festival in June 2009.

Kammersänger and professor Tom Krause

Tom Krause

In a career spanning over five decades, Tom Krause has appeared with most of the great singers and conductors of his generation and sung in the leading operas houses and concert halls in the world.

Because of his enormous experience in all the fields of classical music, (opera, oratorio, lied, etc) and his interest in passing on his legacy of great singing, Tom Krause is in great demand for master classes around the world and is highly regarded as a juror in the most important international singing competitions. He has frequently been head of the Jury or Jury Member at the most prestigious International Singing competitions such as Mobil Song Quest, Auckland; the Queen Sonjia International Singing Competition, Oslo; the Miriam Helin International Singing Competition, Helsinki; Queen Elizabeth Singing Competition, Brussels; the ARD Competition, Munich; the Tschaikowski Singing Competition, Moscow; International Competition of the Art of Lied, Stuttgart; the Singer of the World Competition, Cardiff; the Montreal International Singing Competition, Montreal, Canada; the Moniuszko Competition, Warsaw, etc.

Tom Krause regularly gives master classes at the Academy of Vocal Arts and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, PA; Mozarteum Summer Academy, Salzburg; Cnipal, Marseille; Villecroze Academie Musicale, France; Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth, Brussels; Encuentro Musical, Santander; the Savonlinna Music Academy, Voksenåsen Summer Music Academy, Oslo; Kusatsu Music Festival, Kusatsu, Japan; etc. He has also given master classes at the San Francisco Opera, California; the Florida Grand Opera, Miami, Florida; Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Fifth International Congress of Voice Teachers, Helsinki; Kunitachi School of Music, Tokyo; the Nagoya School of Music, Nagoya, Poland, Portugal, etc.

Since 2002, Professor Krause chairs the Vocal Department at the Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sophia in Madrid.

In recognition of his brilliant artistic contribution to his native Finland, the Finnish State awarded Tom Krause with the Order of the Finnish Lion - the highest award for cultural personalities in Finland. He was also awarded the title of Doctor of Music, Honoris Causa by the University of Helsinki. Tom Krause has also holds the title Kammersaenger in Hamburg for his achievements there.

Tom Krause has appeared in many films, television shows, documentaries and can be heard on over 100 recordings, for which he has won many prizes.

The Düsseldorf-based”Orpheus Quartet’s concerts have inspired “The Strad” magazine to an admiring retrospective, concluding that “...one had to marvel at the Orpheus Quartet’s sense of timbre, at its unified view of the music and its ability to create both textural variety and impetus.” A truly international ensemble (Finnish, American, Dutch and Rumanian), the Orpheus Quartet won 1^st prizes at every competition in which it participated: The Valentino Bucchi International Chamber Music Competition in Rome, in 1988; The Karl Klingler Competition in Munich, in 1990; and the first International Chamber Music Competition of Japan (Osaka), in 1993. As a result, it has received many invitations to perform across Europe, the United States, and Japan.

After its successful US debut in 1997, the quartet has given annual tours to great public acclaim. In the 2000/ 2001 season the Orpheus Quartet performed six times in London, including four times in Wigmore Hall, where it participated in the hall’s celebrated Schubert-weekend. The Orpheus Quartet has been touring with longtime friend Menahem Pressler in Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States, and Canada. Other chamber music partners include pianists Homero Francesch, Pavel Gililov, Ralf Gothoni and Ulrich Koella and clarinettists José Luis Estelles and Sharon Kam. The Orpheus Quartet also spends a lot of time commissioning and playing contemporary music and looks to all possibilities for broadening the standard repertoire with interesting and sometimes forgotten compositions.

The Orpheus Quartet’s recordings have been greeted with international acclaim. In 1993 it was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque de L’Académie Charles Cros for its first recording, issued by the British label ASV, of the eight string quartets by G.F.Malipiero (a world premiere). They also received a Diapason d’Or in 1994 for their Channel Classics disc of the Schubert Quintet in C major with Pieter Wispelwey. To celebrate the release of the two Janácek quartets at Emergo Classics, the quartet gave two different concerts on the same day in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The next recording, dedicated to the chamber works of the great Dutch composer Tristan Keuris, who died all too soon in 1996, appeared in 2002 with Emergo Classics and was chosen as CD of the year by the Dutch book club. Most recently, the quartet has recorded a live-concert with 4 modern instruments built for this occasion by Wolfgang Kury & Caroline Krömmelbein after models of Amati; this will be released, in 2009 and includes music by Haydn, Sibelius and Beethoven.

The Orpheus Quartet also commissioned the great French bowmaker Stéphane Muller to build for the ensemble a quartet of bows; he responded with a beautiful set of bows themed on the four classical elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water), with which the quartet has performed since 2008. Since spring 2005 the Orpheus Quartet has been giving regular master classes at the “Liceo” in Barcelona, and has been invited to teach at the Conservatories of Zurich and San Sebastian, as well as at the Savonlinna Music Academy and Curs International de Musica in Cervera.