Katarina Krpan

Katarina Krpan graduated and received her master’s degree from the Zagreb Academy of Music in the class of Prof. Vladimir Krpan, studied with Prof. Virginio Pavarana and received her master’s degree (1er Prix De Virtuosité) from the Conservatoire de Musique (Lausanne, Switzerland) under the guidance of Prof. Jean-François Antonioli. Her artistic path was greatly influenced by her work and acquaintances with pianists and pedagogues such as Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Maria Tipo, Aldo Cicollini and Andrzej Jasiński.
Having given a series of notable recitals, performances with symphony and chamber orchestras and chamber music evenings, Katarina Krpan quickly became one of the leading Croatian concert artists. Her considerable international reputation is evidenced by invitations from renowned festivals as well as numerous concerts held in major music centers in Europe, North and South America, Australia, Africa, and Asia. The latest in a series were concerts in the United Arab Emirates, including Steinway Hall Dubai. In addition to performances with the Zagreb Soloists, the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra and the HRT Symphony Orchestra, she has also performed with numerous foreign orchestras (Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica di Sanremo, National Philharmonic of Ukraine, Macedonian Philharmonic, Orchestra sinfonica de Rio de Janeiro, Niš Symphony Orchestra, Sofia Philharmonic, Perth Symphony Orchestra, Tirana Philharmonic Orchestra, Filarmonica Banatul Timișoara, etc.). She has performed on the concert stage under the leadership of the most prominent Croatian conductors, but has also collaborated with eminent foreign conductors both at home and abroad. Katarina Krpan’s enviable sound archive contains numerous studio recordings made for the most important Croatian, Swiss, Australian, UAE and Italian radio and television companies, as well as several compact discs made for domestic and foreign record labels. Katarina Krpan’s albums have won several discography awards. In her previous activities, the musician has developed a pedagogical career in addition to an intensive artistic career in the country and abroad, and has shown a strong sense for the upbringing of young musicians, paying particular attention to their comprehensive education. Katarina Krpan’s students have won a large number of national and international awards, and their careers have taken them to the prestigious stages of various seasons, cycles and festivals in the country and abroad.
Her artistic interest in 20th-century music is particularly pronounced, to which she devotes great attention, especially to Croatian music. Katarina Krpan, in fact, pays great attention to the systematic promotion of recent Croatian music literature, and she has confidently and competently premiered and recorded a truly impressive series of recent piano compositions, which – prompted by true artistic collusion – have been equally often dedicated to her by talented beginners and doyens of Croatian composition (e.g. Milko Kelemen, Berislav Šipuš, Mladen Tarbuk, Frano Đurović…). Katarina Krpan is the only pianist in Croatian history who has performed the entire opus of etudes by György Ligeti, the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by Samuel Barber, and many works of world contemporary musical literature.
She also transfers her belief in the necessity of promoting national musical creativity to students, and with that intention, in 2010 she founded HR PROJECT, which brings together students of music schools and students of Music Academies from various departments with the aim of working on works by Croatian authors and performing them at concerts throughout the country and abroad, and with the same goal, she is increasingly building cooperation with the Jeunesses musicales Croatia. The awards she has won so far affirm the value of her activities. These are the Rector’s Award from her studies, the Croatian Music Institute Award (1992), the Ivo Vuljević Award of the Jeunesses musicales Croatia (1992), the University Teachers’ Club Award (2001), the Mai Musical Festival Award (Tergnier, 2003), the Vatroslav Lisinski Award of the Croatian Composers’ Association (2013), the Milka Trnina Award of the Croatian Music Artists’ Association (2013), the Neven Award of the St. Mark Festival (2014) and the City of Zagreb Plaque (2014). Since 1991, she has been playing in a piano duo with her father Vladimir Krpan, and this collaboration has resulted in a large number of concert performances with programs ranging from piano four-hands and two pianos, to performances in various formations and with numerous orchestras, as well as 4 albums and one DVD release. Since 2019, she has been performing in the duo #kkkk with violinist Katarina Kutnar. The duo Kutnar/Krpan has been equally well received by the public, critic and all the music profession field. They won the Porin discography award for the best classical music album (Berislav Šipuš: Zajedno) in 2019, and were nominated in all classical music categories for the album #KKKK Sanjarenje/Daydream in 2022, and the album also won two awards.
Katarina Krpan is a full-time professor with a permanent position at the Academy of Music of the University of Zagreb and the author and head of the elective course Contemporary Music for Piano since the academic year 2021/2022, within which students have performed more than a hundred recent works by composers from Croatia and the world in concerts to date. For a number of years, she worked as a guest professor at the Steinway Academy in Verona (Italy). She has been the head of the summer piano school of the International Cultural Center of Croatian Musical Youth in Grožnjan since 2016.