“Karola Theill was a real discovery”, wrote Der Tagespiegel in praise of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s accompanist following their Lieder recital in the Berlin Philharmonie.
As one of the few female pianists specializing in song interpretation, Karola Theill has made her name as a performer, teacher and university lecturer. She appears in concert throughout Germany (including the Berlin Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Wiesbaden International May Festival and Mosel Festival) and abroad – at the Vienna Musikverein and at the Paris Opéra-Bastille, as well as in Israel and the USA.
She has been the keyboard partner of singers including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Benjamin Bruns, Matthias Goerne, Bettina Jensen, Carola Höhn, Klaus Häger, Thomas Mohr, and Silvia Weiss, and is also a member of the ensembles “flautopiano berlin” and “liedtrio” .
Born in Cologne, Karola Theill was trained as a pianist at the music academies of Hamburg and Berlin. She attended song courses given by Aribert Reimann, and for several years was the accompanist for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s song-interpretation classes.
In 1987, 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 teaches at the “Hanns Eisler” Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where she is an honorary professor, and conducts a song-interpretation class at the Rostock Hochschule für Musik und Theater.
She gives regular masterclasses in song interpretation in Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart (Germany), at the Poznań Music Academy (Poland), at the Conservatorio di Musica in Alessandria (Italy), at the Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem (Israel) and at the University of California (USA).
Her activities are documented in radio recordings and on CD.