Katharina Wolpe - Pianist

Katharina Wolpe was born in Vienna and spent her first six years there in a beautiful house above the vineyards and after the Anschluss the next eight, first in hiding, then in detention camps in various countries and later during the war in a number of refugee camps and foster homes in Switzerland.

It was in a refugee camp that she saw her first piano. She doesn’t remember learning to play or read music and didn’t have her first piano lesson until after she was already giving little concerts for the other refugees. In fact she never had a formal musical education or the opportunity of going to a music school. Nevertheless she was determined (once she discovered that such a profession existed) to be a pianist

She made her London debut at the Proms standing in at short notice for Steuermann playing the Schönberg Piano Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra. She has played with all the major orchestras in the England and many abroad. She has toured widely gaining great critical and public acclaim and her performances of the Viennese classics, especially Schubert and Mozart, have established her as one of the most interesting and eloquent pianists of her generation.

She is the daughter of the composer Stefan Wolpe, whose original and fascinating works are getting an ever greater following. 2002 was the centenary of his birth during which she performed a series of concerts of his solo piano works in London, New York and the Berlin Festival among a number of other cities. At the same time she toured with 3 recital programmes of Mozart and Messiaen which included pieces from Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus and Catalogue d’Oiseaux books 3 & 5.