Anna Prohaska & Julius Drake
Biography Anna Prohaska & Julius Drake
Anna Prohaska
made her debuts at the Komische Oper at the age of 17, the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin at 23 and the Berliner Philharmoniker at 24. Awards include the Echo Klassik, the Daphne Preis and the Schneider-Schott-Preis. Anna is currently a “Junge Wilde” artist at the Konzerthaus in Dortmund.
At the Salzburg Festival her appearances have included Zerlina and Despina, and concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Wiener Philharmoniker. For the Bayerische Staatsoper she has sung Blonde and Inanna (Babylon), and for the Teatro alla Scala Milan she has sung Zerlina, a role she repeated for the company’s tour to the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. For the Theater an der Wien she has sung Marzelline (Fidelio) and Anne Trulove, and for the Royal Opera House in London Constance (Dialogues des carmélites)
She is a member of the ensemble of the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin where her roles have included Pamina, Anne Trulove, Susanna, Sophie, Blonde, Zerlina, Despina, Poppea (Handel’s Agrippina), Oscar, and Frasquita with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Philippe Jordan, Ingo Metzmacher and René Jacobs.
As both a modern and early music specialist Anna’s wide-ranging repertoire includes Jörg Widmann’s Babylon, composed for her and premiered at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Wolfgang Rihm’s Samothrake, dedicated to her and premiered with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and Rihm’s Mnemosyne with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Claudio Abbado. On the early music scene, Anna performs regularly with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Academy of Ancient Music, and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.
Appearances on the concert platform include the Wiener Philharmoniker (Boulez), the Berliner Philharmoniker (Rattle, Harding and Abbado), the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (Jansons, Harding and Labadie), the London Symphony Orchestra (Rattle), Lucerne Festival Orchestra (Abbado), Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela (Abbado), Los Angeles Philharmonic (Dudamel) and the Boston Symphony (von Dohnanyi). In recital she appears in Schwarzenberg, Salzburg, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Berlin, Vienna, London and Amsterdam, where her pianists include Eric Schneider, Maurizio Pollini and Daniel Barenboim.
Recordings include Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with Bernarda Fink for Harmonia Mundi, and two DVD releases for Accentus Music: Berg’s Lulu Suite with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela and Claudio Abbado; and Mozart’s Requiem with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Claudio Abbado. Her first solo album, Sirène, was released in 2011 on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Her second album, The Enchanted Forest, re-launched the Archiv label and Anna toured the programme in London, Vienna, Frankfurt, Berlin, Essen and Munich.
Anna’s most recent recording, released in June 2014 by Deutsche Grammophon, is entitled Behind the Lines. This recital programme marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War and focuses on the people involved in the Great War and their lives. The programme was premiered by the Radialsystem Berlin and in the anniversary year tours London, Berlin, Vienna, Dortmund, Cologne and Munich, and the Edinburgh and Salzburg festivals.
Julius Drake
The pianist Julius Drake lives in London and enjoys an international reputation as one of the finest instrumentalists in his field, collaborating with many of the world’s leading artists, both in recital and on disc. The New Yorker recently described him as the “collaborative pianist nonpareil”.
He appears regularly at all the major music centres and festivals: the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich, Schubertiade, and Salzburg Music Festivals; Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre New York; The Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and Philarmonie, Berlin; the Châtalet and Musée de Louvre Paris; La Scala, Milan and Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid; Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Vienna; and Wigmore Hall and BBC Proms London.
Director of the Perth International Chamber Music Festival in Australia from 2000 – 2003, Julius Drake was also musical director of Deborah Warner’s staging of Janáček’s Diary of One Who Vanished, touring to Munich, London, Dublin, Amsterdam and New York. Since 2009 he has been Artistic Director of the Machynlleth Festival in Wales.
Julius Drake’s passionate interest in song has led to invitations to devise song series for Wigmore Hall, London, the BBC and The Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. His annual series of song recitals – Julius Drake and Friends – in the historic Middle Temple Hall in London, has featured recitals with many outstanding vocal artists including Sir Thomas Allen, Olaf Bär, Iestyn Davies, Veronique Gens, Sergei Leiferkus, Dame Felicity Lott, Simon Keenlyside and Sir Willard White.
Julius Drake is frequently invited to perform at international chamber music festivals – most recently, Lockenhaus in Austria; West Cork in Ireland; Oxford in England; Boswil in Switzerland and Delft in the Netherlands.
Julius Drake’s many recordings include a widely acclaimed series with Gerald Finley for Hyperion, from which the Barber Songs, Schumann Heine Lieder and Britten Songs and Proverbs won the 2007, 2009 and 2011 Gramophone Awards; award winning recordings with Ian Bostridge for EMI; several recitals for the Wigmore Live label, with among others Alice Coote, Joyce DiDonato, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Christopher Maltman and Matthew Polenzani; recordings French Sonatas for Virgin Classics with Nicholas Daniel; of Kodaly and Schoeck sonatas with the cellists Natalie Clein and Christian Poltera for the Hyperion and Bis labels; Tchaikovsky and Mahler with Christianne Stotijn for Onyx; English song with Bejun Mehta for Harmonia Mundi; and Schubert’s ‘Poetisches Tagebuch’ with Christoph Prégardien, which won the Jahrpreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2016.
Julius Drake’s most recent CD’s include a critically acclaimed performance with the Scottish tenor Nicky Spence of Janacek’s Diary of One who Disappeared (Hyperion), ‘The Garden of Eve’ (Alpha) with the Austrian soprano Anna Prohaska, Liszt Complete Songs – vol 6 (Hyperion) with the German soprano Julia Kleiter, and Argento’s Diary of Virginia Woolf (Signum) with the English mezzo, Alice Coote.
Julius Drake holds a Professorship at Graz University for Music and the Performing Arts in Austria, where he has a class for song pianists. He is regularly invited to give master classes worldwide; recently in Aldeburgh, Brussels, Utrecht, Cincinnati, New York, Toronto, Minneapolis, Ann Arbor, Vienna, and at the Schubert Institute in Baden bei Wien.
Concerts in the coming seasons include a series to celebrate the Beethoven anniversary at the 92nd St Y in New York and a Mahler series at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, recitals at La Scala, Milan with Aleksandra Kurzak, at Wigmore Hall with Alice Coote, in Barcelona with Sarah Connolly, in Berlin with Angelika Kirchschlager, at the Schubertiade, Austria with Christoph Prégardien, Ian Bostridge and Gerald Finley, , and tours in Europe with Anna Prohaska and Eva-Maria Westbroek.
