Diemut Poppen

Photo: Claudia Boeckelmann

Diemut Poppen

viola master-class, July 17 – 20, 4 x 45 minutes

Diemut Poppen is one of the most outstanding violists of our time. As a soloist, she has performed internationally with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, for whom she also played the solo viola in several of his orchestras.

Her great love, however, is chamber music. She is the initiator of various chamber music festivals, currently artistic director of the Rigi Music Days (Switzerland) and the Festival Cantabile (Lisbon), and regularly receives invitations to international concert series and festivals (such as Lucerne, Verbier, Berlin, Athens). Her chamber music partners include Isabelle Faust, Leonidas Kavakos, Kirill Troussov, Yuja Wang, András Schiff, Maria João Pires and Enrico Pace.

Diemut Poppen has an extraordinarily wide repertoire ranging from baroque music to contemporary music. Numerous viola concertos and other compositions have been dedicated to her.

In addition to her international concert activities, she is pursuing an intensive teaching career.

Diemut Poppen is currently professor of viola and chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold and holds a visiting professorship at the renowned Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid as well as at the Zurich University of the Arts. For her work in Spain, Diemut Poppen was awarded the Silver Medal for Music by the Queen of Spain.

Her students are regular winners in competitions, auditions and professorships in Europe. At the Carl Flesch Academy, Diemut Poppen will offer individual lessons in all viola literature as well as technique workshops for violists, e.g. in preparation for auditions.

Accompaniment

Stephanie Gurga

American Stephanie Gurga performs as an exceptionally versatile musician on piano, harpsichord, organ, and fortepiano. Her international performances as a soloist and chamber musician have taken her to the Palacios das Artes (Belo Horizonte, Brazil), the National Music Museum (South Dakota, USA), the Festival Ritratti (Italy), the Ticino Musica Festival in Lugano (Switzerland), the Orecchio di Giano Rome (Italy), the Lauener Kammerkonzerte (Switzerland), among others, to the Associazione Mozart (Italy), to the Swiss Chamber Concerts, to the Grange Concert Series (Christ Church, United Kingdom), to the University Artist Series (Johannesburg, South Africa), to the Artists Festival in Istanbul (Turkey), to the National Concert Hall (Taiwan), to the Bad Krozingen Castle and to the Ensemble Valéik in Monthey (Switzerland).

She regularly plays in orchestras such as the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, the European Concert, the Orchestre de Chambre de Génève or the Orquesta Ensemble under the direction of conductors such as John Nelson, Paul Goodwin and Michael Hofstetter.

Since 2010, Stephanie Gurga has been working as a répétiteur at the "Vaud-Valais-Fribourg" Conservatory of Music in Lausanne and Sion (Switzerland). Since 2012, she has participated in several baroque operas each year at Woodhouse Opera (Surrey, England) as Assistant Musical Director.

This is not the first time she has played with Diemut Poppen: as organist at the Church of St. Guerin and Sacré Coeur in Sion (Switzerland), Stephanie Gurga recorded J.S. Bach's three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord together with Diemut Poppen for DakApp in 2016.