ALL ABOUT EVE – The new program

The new program featuring exclusively female composers from the romantic era to the present, full of energy, creative diversity and courage!

Sophie Heinrich (violin) and Maria Radutu (piano) have one thing in common, besides their mastery of their instruments and their passion for music: they are storytellers. In their solo programs, they have created their own ways of bringing well-known and unknown music to the audience in a very individual way: Radutu with her concert format PianoBox, and Heinrich with Alma’s Musiksalon.

Maria invites the audience into the worlds of the most diverse musical styles and helps you to find your very own, contemporary, modern approach to the music. Sophie uses historical texts and stories to transport the audience into past eras and into the emotional worlds of their composers. She introduces the composers with quotes from their diaries and letters and makes their works more comprehensible.

Heinrich and Radutu combine the best of both in their joint program “All About Eve“. Included are the Boulanger sisters, united by a touching and intimate relationship beyond death; the African-American Florence Price with her seething, unwavering power; the Croatian-Hungarian composer Dora Pejacevic and her intimate sonata; Piazzola and the rhythmic power of his “Le Grand Tango”, in a legendary arrangement by the famous composer Sofia Guibadulina, and many more.

Vibrancy, creative diversity, quality and courage – these are the characteristics all women have in common. So today we are picking “Eva’s ripe apples” – the fruit of a tree that women have courageously planted in the past against all odds to express themselves and nourish their souls.

Sophie Heinrich was born in Augsburg and has been performing since she was four years old. Her musical studies took her to Berlin, to the renowned Hanns Eisler Academy of Music under Prof. Weithaas, and to the Lübeck Academy of Music under Prof. Brandis. She is the winner and prize-winner of several international competitions and has received scholarships from the “Studienstiftung des Dt. Volkes”, the “Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben” and the “ZEIT- Stiftung”, among others. From 2012 to 2023, Sophie Heinrich gained significant attention as First Concertmaster: first in a permanent position at the Komische Oper Berlin, then, as the first woman in history in this position in the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. The cinema documentary “Tonsüchtig” (2020) provides a beautiful document about this.

She has also appeared as guest concertmaster in orchestras such as the Bavarian State Opera, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Bayer. Rundfunk or the Staatskapelle Berlin. She performs regularly as a soloist and chamber musician and is invited to international festivals. Recordings for 3sat, Takt1 (Strauss’ “Das Heldenleben” with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra), arte, ORF, Deutschlandfunk, MDR, BR etc. document her solo and chamber music skills, as well as those as a concertmaster.

Sophie Heinrich has been a professor for violin at the Stella Vorarlberg Private University of Music since 2021 and is an internationally invited mentor. Encouraging young women to have more courage and self-confidence, also in leadership matters, is a strong focus of hers.

Born in Bucharest, Austrian-Romanian pianist Maria Radutu was known as a child prodigy in the 1990s and has won over twenty national and international prizes.

After receiving her concert diploma at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, her solo career has taken her to Europe, Asia and the USA, to concert halls such as Carnegie Hall, Prince Mahidol Hall in Bangkok, the Großer Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Vienna State Opera, the Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, the Sala Radio in Bucharest, the Smith Center in Las Vegas and the National Concert Hall in Taipei. She has performed as a soloist with the RSO Vienna, the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, the Zagreb Philharmonic, the Orquesta Clasica Santa Cecilia, the Cottbus Philharmonic Orchestra, the California Symphony and the Las Vegas Philharmonic, among others.

Her album “Phoenix” has reached half a million streams, her previous album “Insomnia” was released by Decca Records and was reviewed as a “First Class listening experience“ (Die Presse). The latest album includes Shostakovich’s 1st Piano Concerto together with the RSO Vienna, Dirk Kaftan and Selina Ott. In her projects, she combines piano music with other art forms such as modern dance, music videos, painting, wine tastings, storytelling, jazz and world music. In her concert format “PianoBox”, as a live concert and podcast, Radutu emotionally communicates music across the boundaries of language, style and background.

Maria Radutu is the artistic director of the piano festival “Keys to Heaven” at Esterházy Castle in Eisenstadt.