VOICES WITHIN
exploring the connection between cello and voice through the works of remarkable female composers
6.-10. July 2025
Personal Introduction
My love for singing began at a very young age, with Puccini’s Madame Butterfly capturing my imagination when I was just three years old. But it wasn’t until I moved to England that choral music took on a deeper, more transformative role in my life. Immersed in the rich English choral tradition, I performed regularly at Canterbury Cathedral and toured internationally with the Crypt Choir, including tours to China and Belgium.
Voices Within is an hour-long program that explores the intimate, organic connection between the cello and the human voice. It features vocal works reimagined for cello and piano, as well as pieces for singing cellist and piano. What has always drawn me to singing is its ability to create moments of stillness, presence, and connection, a kind of magic that reaches deep into the soul. With Voices Within, I aim to bring that atmosphere to life by blending the warmth and vulnerability of the human voice with the resonance and lyricism of the cello.
Performances
The program can be experienced LIVE in a series of private house concerts as well as three public concerts listed below:
Program:
The program solely features female composers, many of whom remain unjustly underrepresented. Composers of the program include Amy Beach, Clara Schumann, Florence Price, Hildegard von Bingen and sisters Nadia and Lili Boulanger. Through Voices Within, the incredible contributions of female composers are not only celebrated but also serve to inspire a more inclusive and diverse musical landscape.
At the heart of this program is a newly commissioned work, a deeply expressive piece for singing cellist and piano, by the phenomenal composer Michaela Catranis. This collaboration is continuing to be one of the most inspiring aspects of the project for me. Collaborating closely with a living composer is incredibly special and Michaela’s ability to write for both voice and cello as one, creates a breathtaking sound world in which the cello mimics, embraces, and amplifies the human voice. Her work not only encapsulates the spirit of Voices Within perfectly, but also gives it a bold, contemporary voice that echoes the timeless emotional power of music.
Having found this repertoire deeply engaging both artistically and personally, I am committed to continuing its exploration through further research and the development of new program concepts for the future.
Pianist
Yelyzaveta Rodionova
I first met Yelyzaveta during our studies at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. From the very beginning, we felt an immediate musical connection and began playing together, initially as part of a piano trio, and soon after as a duo. A beautiful symmetry in our story is that our teachers, Prof. Claudio Bohórquez and Prof. Peter Nagy, have also performed and recorded together as a cello-piano duo.
Since then, Yelyzaveta and I have built a close artistic partnership and have performed regularly in a variety of settings. One of the most meaningful aspects of our collaboration is this project VOICES WITHIN, through which we seek to amplify underrepresented voices in classical music, particularly those of women composers. Sharing this program on stage with her is both a joy and a privilege, an experience that feels deeply personal, musically and artistically.
Yelyzaveta Rodionova (*1997 in Ukraine) is studying piano in the “Konzertexam” program at the HMDK Stuttgart with Prof. Peter Nagy. She completed her bachelor's and master's degrees at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Music in Berlin with Prof. Wollweber. She has also received inspiration from masterclasses with Dmitri Baschkirov, Jura Margulis, Boris Berman, Till Fellner, Vitaliy Samoshko, and Alan Fraser. She has given concerts in Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Ukraine, performing at various prestigious venues and festivals, including the “Jahrhundertwende-Gesellschaft” Heidelberg, Bechstein Young Professionals Concert Series, Steinway & Sons Berlin, 18th Bayreuth Piano Festival, Brahms Festival at the Konzerthaus Berlin, "Klassik um Eins" concerts at the Mendelssohn Remise Berlin, Burg Beeskow, Musikfest Schöneiche, excellence concerts at the Hanns Eisler University of Music, and the "Musik am Bauhaus" Festival at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum Berlin. Additionally, she has performed as a soloist with the Kharkiv Philharmonic and the Slobozhanskyi Orchestra. Yelyzaveta has won prizes in several international piano competitions: 3rd Prize at the "Oeiras Piano Competition" in Portugal, 3rd Prize at the International Piano Competition of the “Jahrhundertwende-Gesellschaft” Heidelberg in Germany, 2nd Prize at the "Riga International Piano Competition" in Latvia, and 1st Prize at the International Competition "Music without Limits" in Lithuania. She has recently been awarded the Deutschlandstipendium and Eisler Scholarship.
Featured Composer
Michaela Catranis
Jeita" by Michaela Rea Catranis, emerged...as something like a musical allegory of the cave, an earthly meditation as a sonorous, moving narration of a single, lonely voice. The immense "TONALi" festival in the Elbphilharmonie ended with such a courageous appeal to the inner world." Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, Edition Faust-Kultur
"I write about our humanness, our connection to each other and the world around us, both natural and digital worlds. It could be like Laughter or a Prayer, or maybe a Shadow, muscles and sinew rippling, a Kiss. The movements of Love, trembling, electric, or a Scream, life tearing through the flesh of a Mother, a tiny heart beating, new against her chest, both of them still dripping from her wound, washed in blood. The Body, charged up with Soul, spirit-stuff and the ecstasy of the moment. Being. It is all this, a Polyphony of human experience, so brief, sensuous, writhing, soft, dirty, naked, full of rage, of joy, of tenderness. It's a courageous smile and then some silence too. It is how I talk to you, with moonbeams in my eyes; a conversation between lovers." ~ Michaela Catranis
With a strong background in classical piano, Michaela Catranis' eclectic tastes have led her to explore experimental music, electronic, jazz and beyond, crafting a highly versatile sonic language. Her multi-media performances have received international acclaim, sound worlds that spin out in a colorful exchange of disciplines, criss-crossing music, art, technology and dance. This process of collective art-making lies at the heart of Michaela’s work, which she feels echoes our shared humanity, a thirst for togetherness born from her experiences growing up in a family of eleven. She derives inspiration from her classical training, playing with the family band, SPACE CATS, as well as non-classical sonorities that she’s collected from her travels and walks in the forest.
In 2018, she won the TONALi18 Composition Prize. The following year, she was awarded the Contemporary Arts Alliance-Berlin Scholarship, commissioned by Ensemble Modern as part of the Composer's Seminar/Cresc. Biennale for Contemprary Music and selected as composer laureate of the Académie Voix Nouvelles - Royaumont. Her works have been performed internationally in concert halls such as the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Berliner Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall and the KKL Lucerne. She has written for the Mivos Quartet, Zafraan Ensemble, RIOT, Ensemble Modern, KNM, among others, and works closely with soprano, Johanna Vargas, and Berlin-based Duo Amabile. Michaela holds degrees in piano performance from the Peabody Conservatory and composition from the Hanns Eisler School of Music.
!! COMING SOON !!
Video featuring an exclusive interview with Michaela Catranis giving insight into her composing process and our collaboration for Voices Within
This project is enabled through the generous support of the Deutsche Orchester Stiftung.
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