Translate

MENU

Jul 29, 2024

Blazing a Trail for Female Orchestra Conductors in Leadership Positions

On April 13 and 14, 2024, Sinfonietta Passau—a symphony orchestra founded and led by Eleni Papakyriakou (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, 2012)—performed highly acclaimed concerts supported by an SLI grant. She outlines the significance of the orchestra not only in promoting gender equality but also in enriching the cultural life of the community and achieving musical and social harmony.

*     *     *

Sinfonietta Passau is a newly founded symphony orchestra in the Bavarian city of Passau, on the German-Austrian border. The orchestra consists of 64 musicians, mainly freelance professional musicians from the wider region and advanced students from the nearby music universities in Linz, Munich, and Salzburg—a well-balanced mixture that combines quality, passion, vitality, and youthful energy. The 33 female and 31 male orchestra members came to Passau over three weekends in March and April 2024 for intensive rehearsals and two concerts in Passau and nearby Deggendorf. The program consisted of:

  • Philipp Ortmeier (Passau-born composer): “Tree of Life” for soprano and orchestra, German premiere (first prize at the March 2023 “Orient/Occident” international competition in Ukraine). Soloist: Sarah Romberger
  • Gustav Mahler: Orchestral songs from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” Soloist: Sarah Romberger
  • Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 (Bruckner Year 2024)

 

Sinfonietta Passau, April 2024. ©Florian Stelzer

The concerts were highly successful—the press reviews and the feedback of the audience were very enthusiastic:

“A great evening: standing ovations for Sinfonietta Passau with Bruckner’s Seventh and Philipp Ortmeier’s “Tree of Life.” You can feel the trust between the orchestra and the conductor. The orchestra is highly motivated. The conductor masters the large orchestra with clear gestures and great calm. She takes the pauses seriously and makes them wonderfully fitting in the room.”
Passauer Neue Presse

“Great musical sensitivity: The conductor succeeds in making the sound layers in this monumental work [Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony] audible in a finely nuanced way. The Bruckner interpretation receives standing ovations and many “Brava” calls for the conductor.”
—Rabenstein Kultur Blog

 

Sinfonietta Passau performing at the Church St. Peter in Passau, April 13, 2024. ©Florian Stelzer

Back in my teenager years, the beauty and power of Anton Bruckner’s music awakened in me a love for the orchestral sound and a strong will to become a conductor. I wanted to understand the masterpieces of the symphonic repertoire and the message of the composers in depth and then share it with the audience. I already had a vision of the social impact music can make—as the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein said: “Art never stopped a war. But it can change people. It can affect people, so that they are changed—enriched, ennobled, encouraged—they then act in a way that can affect the course of events . . . by the way they vote, they behave, the way they think.”

Several years later, my dream came true. After studying orchestral conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and my professional experience with various orchestras in Europe, I decided to create my own symphony orchestra. Together with other supporters we founded the nonprofit association Sinfonietta Passau e.V. in October 2022. My vision was not only to share with the public the beauty and the message of orchestral masterpieces, which are so rarely heard around Passau, but also to have a major social impact. As it turned out, the social benefits were much more than I had thought at the beginning. 

Like many other female conductors, I faced discrimination and unfair treatment in my professional career up to that point. A study by the German Cultural Council in 2021 showed that currently only 8% of conductors in leadership positions in Germany are female, and the same percentage applies worldwide (study commissioned by the conducting competition, La Maestra Paris, in 2022). As the founder and music and artistic director of Sinfonietta Passau, I wanted to send a powerful message to the world of classical music: musicality and leadership skills have nothing to do with gender. Female conductors are equally capable of effectively leading an orchestra as their male colleagues, so they should be given more chances and should be treated with the same respect. This applies also for women in leadership and managerial positions in general.

 

Eleni Papakyriakou conducting Sinfonietta Passau in the Church Mariä Himmelfahrt in Deggendorf, April 14, 2024. ©Florian Stelzer

During the post-pandemic revival of the cultural scene, another goal was to provide greater opportunities for freelance professional musicians. According to a survey by the Berlin State Music Council, a third of freelance musicians no longer see any future in the music profession, and many have already given up or are in the process of reorienting themselves. In addition, I wanted to offer advanced music students the chance of working with professionals, which is of great educational value. The music students can also supplement their CV with professional experience, which gives them a higher chance of being invited to audition for permanent orchestra positions.

An important part of the social action of the orchestra is the inclusion of musicians who come from disadvantaged or war regions, thus promoting mutual understanding and helping create a more open society that is free of prejudices. The peaceful coexistence of people from different origins and social backgrounds is one of the most important purposes of an institution like an orchestra, as well as of music in general. For the April 2024 concerts, professional musicians who fled Ukraine because of the war were invited to participate.

In the small but culturally vibrant city of Passau, a large part of the modern orchestral repertoire—symphonic music by composers such as Bruckner, Mahler, and Sibelius, as well as contemporary music—was almost never heard. But the region has some exceptional local composers, whose works are worth listening to. This combination of old masterpieces with contemporary music, along with rarely performed works, proved to be very successful in enriching the city’s musical life. At Sinfonietta Passau’s founding concerts in 2023, we performed the world premiere of a work by Bavarian composer Cornelius Hirsch. And in the recent concerts in April 2024, the “Tree of Life” by Passau-born composer Philipp Ortmeier impressed the audience and the critics and ensured the composer the recognition he deserves.

Sinfonietta Passau also aims to act as a springboard for young, talented soloists, who are at the beginning of their careers, in addition to collaborating with internationally acclaimed soloists. In the founding concerts, the award-winning young Greek flutist Stathis Karapanos and the internationally renowned flutist and professor at the Paris Conservatory Philippe Bernold performed the rarely played flute concerto by Carl Nielsen. In April 2024, we had the honor to perform with mezzo-soprano Sarah Romberger, who has already started a brilliant career in Germany. The public was moved and excited with her powerful interpretation of Philipp Ortmeier’s “Tree of Life” and Gustav Mahler’s songs.

 

Mezzo-soprano Sarah Romberger and Sinfonietta Passau, April 14, 2024. ©Florian Stelzer

All in all, the two concerts in April 2024 were a huge success and resonated widely in the local community. The objectives of the orchestra were achieved, and everyone is looking forward to future activities. Sinfonietta Passau aspires to become an important cultural institution in the region, making the city of Passau a radiant artistic center on the German-Austrian border that is worthily represented in international festivals in Germany, Austria and neighboring countries.

 

Sinfonietta Passau performing on April 14 at the Church Mariä Himmelfahrt, Deggendorf. ©Florian Stelzer

Eleni Papakyriakou

Eleni Papakyriakou*

University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

SLI

Received Sylff fellowship in 2012
Current affiliation: Recipient of the SYLFF Leadership Initiatives (SLI) Award 2024

Academic Achievements, Social Engagement Initiatives:
- Graduate Orchestra Conducting (2015, Mag. art.), University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
- Founder, Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of Sinfonietta Passau (symphony orchestra), President of the non-profit association "Sinfonietta Passau e.V." (since 2022)

Eleni Papakyriakou comes from Thessaloniki, Greece. Her main studies of orchestra conducting were completed in 2015 at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Mag. art.). She is the chief conductor of the Passau University Orchestra (2016-2019 and since 2022) and worked at the Landestheater Niederbayern for 7 years, conducting opera performances. In 2023 she founded her own symphony orchestra, Sinfonietta Passau, which celebrated its first concerts in spring 2023 with great success.

Eleni Papakyriakou collaborated as a guest conductor with the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra in November-December 2022. She also held a lectureship at the Music Academy "Louis Spohr" Kassel in 2022, which was successfully completed with a symphony concert in October. In 2019-2020, she appeared as a guest conductor with the Akademischer Orchesterverein Wien.

In September 2020 she held an invitation - among 220 applications - for the international conducting competition La Maestra Paris, which took place in Philharmonie de Paris, with Paris Mozart Orchestra, and was live broadcasted on arte.tv. This led to a concert with Orchestre Pasdeloup in Philharmonie de Paris (Grande Salle Pierre Boulez) in December 2021.

Eleni Papakyriakou began the orchestral studies in 2007 in Greece (Myron Michailidis, Karolos Trikolidis) and in 2010 she continued at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna (Uroš Lajovic, Johannes Wildner). In 2012/13 she took active part in regular courses with Bertrand de Billy and Fabio Luisi. As part of her Diploma Examination (June 2015), Eleni Papakyriakou debuted with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra in the Great Broadcasting Hall of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation. After audition, she actively participated in the "53. Weimar Master Classes" (Nicolás Pasquet), while conducting The City of Thessaloniki Symphony Orchestra in the final concert of the "Young Conductors´ Festival".

While studying, Eleni Papakyriakou already took up the assistant conductor’s post at the Vienna International Opera Academy. She has premiered contemporary works with the ProArte Orchestra and has been a scholarship holder several times, among others from the SYLFF Program of the Tokyo Foundation. Within the framework of the "SYLFF Chamber Music Seminars - Concert Excellence" she took over at short notice the conducting of an ensemble with students from New York, Paris and Vienna. The final concert was live broadcasted.

Before her conducting studies, Eleni Papakyriakou graduated musicology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Dipl.). In the same time, she studied composition and holds Diplomas of piano, harmony, counterpoint, fugue and byzantine music. Her musicological interest led her to research on compositions by J. Brahms, F. Schubert and A. Bruckner.

Summary of Support Program Activities:
Name of project: "Gender equality for orchestra conductors in leadership positions: Sinfonietta Passau - a symphony orchestra founded by Eleni Papakyriakou. Concerts "Tree of Life - Bruckner200" in April 2024".

Female conductors still face gender inequality and discrimination. Currently only 8% of conductors in leadership positions in Germany are female (study by the German Cultural Council 2021). The same number applies worldwide (study commissioned by the conducting competition La Maestra Paris” 2022). This is the most important issue that I wish to address with this project.

The concerts of Sinfonietta Passau in April 2024 took place with enormous success. The press reviews and the responses of the public are very enthusiastic and praise this initiative, not only for its importance in the cultural life of the region, but also as a clear message by a young female conductor to the music world.

I am very thankful to the Tokyo Foundation for supporting this initiative through the SLI Program (Sylff Leadership Initiative).

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eleni.papakyr/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eleni_papakyriakou_conductor/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleni-papakyriakou-conductor/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq6nSc_tex79oUliw-GtcTg

Leave a comment

Group

Sylff Institution

First Name

Family Name

E-mail address

Comment

CAPTCHA


Required
  • All comments will be verified by the sylff secretariat staff before being posted.
  • E-mail address will be used by the secretariat only to communicate with the author and will not be published online.

Related Voices

TOP