Viktoria Reiswich-Dapp

Instructor, Piano

Diplomas (Master’s equivalent) in piano performance and piano pedagogy - Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts (Frankfurt/Main, Germany)
DMus - University of Alberta

Viktoria Reiswich-Dapp’s extraordinary artistry has been recognized with national and international prizes and enthusiastic praise. The Frankfurter Neue Presse, for example, salutes her “high-profile skills”, while the Pforzheimer Zeitung celebrates her “clarity of touch…stylistic sense…[and] breathtaking suppleness”, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung proclaims that Viktoria is “an impeccable soloist”. In addition to being a soloist, she has performed with orchestras and in various chamber music formations in Canada, the U.S., Austria, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Türkiye, Croatia and Uzbekistan, and has recorded CDs in Germany, Canada and Poland. Viktoria has an unusually wide range of accomplishments and her education reflects a breadth and variety of traditions.

She received her early training in the Soviet Union before being accepted at 13 as a pre-student at the University of Music in Karlsruhe (Germany) where she studied with Sontraud Speidel, herself a student of distinguished teachers Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, Branka Musulin and Géza Anda. Viktoria continued her studies with Irina Edelstein, a student of Jacob Milstein, and Joachim Volkmann, a student of Wilhelm Kempff, at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts from where she graduated with Diplomas (Master’s equivalent) in piano performance and in piano pedagogy. She came to Canada as the first and only performer to be awarded the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship to study at the University of Alberta under Jacques Després, a student of György Sebök and Gilbert Kalish. Her Doctor of Music in piano performance reflects her investigation of intermedial performance strategies that combine music with various media, explore the tension between the live and the mediatized, and reveal the socio-cultural context of both work and performance.

Viktoria’s formal training on three continents has sparked her curiosity for a wide range of genres and styles, including new music and its expansion of musical aesthetics. Every culture and environment has its own ideas and conventions, and she believes that these differences enrich and invigorate musical expression and performance. Viktoria continues to include contemporary works in her solo and chamber music recitals, inviting the audience to experience such nuances on a musical level.

She has also a special love and passion for Art Song. She worked on Art Song with esteemed faculty including Elly Ameling, Barbara Bonney, Julius Drake, Rudolf Jansen, and Helmut Deutsch at the Franz-Schubert-Institute in Baden, Vienna. She has extensive teaching and vocal coaching experience in three languages and is especially passionate about exploring the intricate interaction of poetry and music, particularly in her native languages of Russian and German.

Viktoria has a deep commitment to music education. She teaches piano performance, vocal and instrumental chamber music, piano literature, and piano pedagogy at the University of Alberta, and frequently shares her experiences in lectures and masterclasses at conferences around the world. She is honoured to be able to contribute to the Edmonton music community both as conference convener for the Alberta Registered Music Teachers Association (ARMTA) and as a board member of the Anne Burrows Foundation which supports young musicians from Edmonton and surrounding area.