Eleanor Hope Austria← Back to list
Eleanor Hope was born and raised in South Africa. After completing her studies (languages and business management) she worked in advertising, marketing and public relations. In 1975 she became the personal assistant to Yehudi Menuhin, and soon afterwards took over his general management. In 1980 he entrusted the artistic administration of his festival in Gstaad, Switzerland to her, and she retained this post until he retired as artistic director 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 which 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. She was on the advisory board of the festivals of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and Vilnius, Lithuania, and 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 take over the artistic direction of the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad for three years.
Eleanor Hope worked for many years as a special projects advisor for IMG Artists, an international artists’ agency with offices in London, Paris, New York and Kuala Lumpur 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 commissioned by the City of Basel; and the design of the Wroclaw Cultural Centre with the internationally renowned acousticians ARTEC.
She has wide experience in the organisation of gala concerts and special events in Vienna, where she now lives, and in other European centres. She is in demand as a lecturer on career management in the arts, and a regular juror of the annual International Johannes Brahms Competition. She has also been a judge in the finals of Gradus Ad Parnassum, the Austrian inter-university music competition, Vienna Music University´s ´Rising Stars´competition, the Zhuhai International Mozart Violin Competition, Mozarteum University´s Ricci Competition and the Sir Ian Stoutzker Prize.
Eleanor Hope is a director of Interclassica Music Management in Vienna and is the general manager of violinists Vadim Repin, Ziyu He and Jan Mráček and the conductors James Judd, Carlo Tenan and Thomas Rösner. She has completed five years as a member of the Advisory Council of Salzburg Mozarteum University and is a former vice-president of the European Association of Artists' Agents. She is married to a singer and professor at the University of Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna, Benno Schollum, and has two sons, Jasper Hope, who became chief executive of Dubai Opera after 7 years as chief operations officer at London’s Royal Albert Hall, and Daniel Hope, who has an international career as a violinist, broadcaster, writer and who is music director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and San Francisco´s New Century Chamber Orchestra.
