»Exemplary is the beautiful iridescence of the piano pieces that Theill plays with great joy at the promise of self-absorption in normal everyday: music at the blue hour.«
As one of the few female pianists specializing in Lied interpretation, Karola Theill has made her name as a performer, teacher and university lecturer.
She appears in concert throughout Germany and abroad (f.e. Musikverein Wien, Opéra de Bastille, Paris) as well as in Israel, the USA and China.
She has been the collaborate partner of singers including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Benjamin Bruns, Okka von der Damerau, Angela Denoke, Matthias Goerne, Klaus Häger, Fionnuala McCarthy, Thomas Mohr, Martina Rüping, Nadine Weissmann and others.
Born in Cologne, Karola Theill was trained as a pianist at the music academies of Hamburg and Berlin. She attended Lied courses given by Aribert Reimann, and for several years was the accompanist for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s Lied interpretation classes.
She was awarded a fellowship to study at the Indiana University, School of Music in Bloomington. Another important artistic influence has been her close collaboration with the pianist Shoshana Cohen in Jerusalem.
Karola Theill taught more than 20 years at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin, where she is an honorary professor, and conducts a Lied interpretation class at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock.
In addition she gives regular masterclasses in Lied interpretation in Berlin, at the Sankt Goar International Music Festival and Academy (Germany), at the Music Academies in Poznan and Warsaw (Poland), Riga (Latvia), Vilnius (Litauen), Cluj (Rumänien), Castelfranco (Italien), Jerusalem (Israel), Los Angeles (USA) and Hang Zhou (China) and is a sought-after member of the juries of international competitions for Lied duo.
Her activities are documented in radio recordings and on numerous CDs.