ELEANOR HOPE After completing her studies (languages and business management) Eleanor Hope worked in advertising, marketing and public relations. In 1975 she became the personal assistant and subsequently general manager of Yehudi Menuhin. In 1980 he entrusted the artistic administration of his festival in Gstaad, Switzerland to her, and she retained this post until he retired in 1996. Between 1981 and 1992 she was managing director of the London agency, Anglo Swiss Artists, which represented over 100 artists and orchestras, and was active in the fields of concert promotion, event management and international orchestral touring. From 1992 to 1994 she was the artistic director of the Bath Mozartfest in England and was on the advisory board of the Schleswig-Holstein Festival. On the sudden death of Lord Menuhin in 1999 she became chairman of the Yehudi Menuhin Memorial Trust. The same year she was asked to resume the artistic direction of the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad for three years. Eleanor Hope worked for many years as special projects advisor for IMG Artists with responsibilities including the programming of the classical music, entertainment and dance subscription series of the Jahrhunderthalle Frankfurt in 2000 and 2001; collaboration on a study of the Basel Symphony Orchestra for the City of Basel; and the design of the Wroclaw Cultural Centre with the internationally renowned acousticians ARTEC.
Eleanor Hope is a member of the Advisory Council of Salzburg Mozarteum University, is a former vice-president of the European Association of Artists' Agents, and lectures on music careers. She has been a juror at the annual International Johannes Brahms Competition, the University of Vienna’s Casinos Austria ‘Rising Stars’ award, the Sir Ian Stoutzker Prize, Austria's Gradus Ad Parnassum competition, the Zhuhai International Mozart Competition and the Ricci Competition.


BENNO SCHOLLUM Austrian baritone Benno Schollum studied at the Vienna University of Music, and has himself taught there since 1983. He is the co-author of German for Singers (Schirmer, New York) which became the standard work of its kind in North America, and regularly gives Lied masterclasses with emphasis on diction at the Franz Schubert Institute, Zagreb Music Academy, Royal Academy and Royal College of Music, London, Sibelius Academy Helsinki, Borusan Academy Istanbul and the Eva Lind Music Academy, Tirol.
His repertoire extends from the great oratorios to opera, operetta, musicals, lieder, chansons and Viennese music.  He has performed among others with the Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, the Spanish National Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, the Spanish National Orchestra, the RSO Madrid, Sinfonia Varsovia and the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow. Benno Schollum played the role of Kuno in the film production of Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (www.huntersbride.com) directed by Jens Neubert with the London Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Harding, and featuring Juliane Banse, Olaf Bär, Franz Grundheber and René Pape. Among the CDs he has recorded Wilhelm Busch in Wort und Ton with Stephan Paryla and Russell Ryan (Preiser Records), Schubert’s Winterreise (Graham Johnson, piano). Haydn’s  Creation, Händel’s Messiah,  Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, various Schubert Masses (Sinfonia Varsovia, Yehudi Menuhin, Warner Classics), Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta (Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Relief Records) and Weinberger’s opera Wallenstein (RSO Vienna, Cornelius Meister, ORF Records). He chairs the Lied section of the International Johannes Brahms Competition.