The conductor Kristiina Poska captivates with her extraordinary musicality and her remarkably subtle conducting. »The world will certainly hear a lot about her« predicted Der Tagesspiegel, »her musical work is magnificent, the orchestra bursts into flames under her slender hands« cheered the Berliner Morgenzeitung.
Born in the Estonian town of Türi, Kristiina Poska began studying choral conducting at the Music Academy in Tallinn in 1998 and continued with orchestral conducting at the Music Academy Hanns Eisler in Berlin with Christian Ehwald in 2004.
After various engagements and stations with orchestras and at opera houses Kristiina Poska was asked to conduct Verdis La Traviata at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2010. Enthusiastically received by both orchestra and audience she was immediately re-invited for a series of Jacques Offenbach’s La Périchole following which Intendant Barrie Kosky appointed her into his musical team as First Kapellmeister. In February 2012 Kosky and Poska developed the highly acclaimed new production of Bertolt Brecht’s Seven Deadly Sins, continued by the successful collaboration for Die Zauberflöte with group 1927, which attracted world-wide attention. Kristiina Poska remained First Kapellmeister at Komische Oper Berlin until 2016 leading many revivals and productions.
Kristiina Poska is an internationally sought-after conductor. She has worked with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Symphonies in Cologne, Leipzig, Saarbrücken/Kaiserslautern, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna, at Vienna Konzerthaus with Camerata Salzburg, the Tonkünstlerorchester Niederösterreich, the Brucknerorches-ter Linz at the Oberösterreichische Stiftskonzerte, Munich Philharmonic, Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Tonhalle-orchester Zurich, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Gothenburg Symphony, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. Opera engagements brought her to Volksoper Wien, Hamburgische Staatsoper, Finnish National Opera, Royal Swedish Opera, the Norwegian Opera and Opera Zurich, where she conducted a new production of Pierangelo Valtinonis The Wizard of Oz in 2016/17.
Projects in 2017/18 include Orchestra della Svizzera italiana with Katia and Marielle Labèque as soloists, Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Mozartwoche Salzburg and renewed invitations to Sinfonieorchester Basel, Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, Copenhagen Philharmonic and to Klagenfurt and Basel, where she will direct new opera productions of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mzensk and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.
Kristiina Poska was supported by the Conductor’s Forum of the Deutscher Musikrat and won the prestigious German Conductor’s Prize in April 2013. Before that she already received numerous international prizes, e.g. from the Dimitris Mitropoulos-Conducting Competition Athens 2006, from Donatella-Flick-Competition conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in 2010 as well as at the renowned Malko-Competition in May 2012, where she also received the audience prize following the final concert with Danish National Symphony Orchestra.
