Felix Klieser - Horn

BIOGRAPHY 2023/2024

"Not talent, but holding on to one's dreams against all odds is the path to happiness." (Felix Klieser)

Felix Klieser is an exceptional artist in several aspects. At the age of 5, he took his first horn lessons at the age of 13 he enrolled as a junior student at the University of Music and Theater in Hannover in 2014, he received the ECHO Klassik as Young Artist of the Year as well as the Music Award of the Association of German Concert Directors. In the same year, Patmos Verlag published his life story "Footnotes - A horn player without arms conquers the World". In 2016 he received the prestigious Leonard Bernstein Award of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival.

In the summer of 2022, he played his debut at the Ravenna Festival at the invitation of Maestro Riccardo Muti.

He concluded his two-year residency with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra with a stunning debut at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in the summer of 2023. The concert was broadcast live on both radio and television.

Highlights from Felix Klieser's programme for the 2023/2024 season include his debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. He will also appear for the first time with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada, conducted by Alexander Shelley. Another debut awaits him with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under the baton of John Butt. Furthermore, Felix Klieser will perform in renowned concert halls such as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Cologne Philharmonie and the Vienna Konzerthaus.

In the field of chamber music, he is about to embark on an extensive tour in which he will present his septet programme together with renowned musicians such as Sebastian Manz (clarinet), Dag Jensen (bassoon), Franziska Hölscher (violin), Wen-Xiao Zheng (viola), Lionel Martin (violoncello) and Dominik Wagner (double bass). This tour will take them to Innsbruck and Munich, among other places.

Felix Klieser will also return to established stages, including the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra as well as the Robert Schumann Philharmonic Orchestra, where he will perform the work "Soundscape" by Rolf Martinsson, which is dedicated to him. After many years, the horn player is once again working with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn and will return to Turkey for a concert where he will perform for the first time with the Antalya State Symphony Orchestra.

In March 2019, Felix Klieser released the recording of the complete Mozart Horn Concertos with the Camerata Salzburg on Berlin Classics, which subsequently spent three months in the Top 10 of the German classical music charts. Most recently, the sought-after chamber music recording with his friends of the Zemlinksy Quartet with works by Haydn and Mozart was released.

His debut album Reveries with works for horn and piano, which was released in 2013 and was awarded the ECHO-Klassik, was followed in 2015 by Horn Concertos, Klieser's first orchestral CD with works by Mozart and the brothers Joseph and Michael Haydn, which he performed together with the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn under the musical direction of Ruben Gazarian. In September 2017 he published his third CD Horn Trio, recorded with the violinist Andrej Bielow and the pianist Herbert Schuch at the Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) in Munich, on which the horn player not only devotes himself to the profound trio for horn, violin and piano by Johannes Brahms but also to lesser-known works for this exciting line-up. His recording with CHAARTS Chamber Orchestra (Beyond Words, Arias for Horn and Orchestra) turned out to be a huge digital success on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

In the past season, Felix Klieser already appeared as soloist with the Camerata Salzburg as well as the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, the Fondazione Orchestra Sinfonica Milano Guiseppe Verdi (Milan), the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, the Festival Strings Lucerne, the Slovenska Filharmonija (Bratislava), the chamber orchestra of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Saarländisches Staatsorchester, the Magdeburgische Philharmonie and the Kammerakademie Potsdam. He has also made chamber music appearances at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Glocke Bremen, the Essener Philharmonie, the Beethovenhaus Bonn, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, the Oxford Chamber Music Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival.

On social media, Klieser likes to let his audience participate in his everyday life as an artist and also take a look behind the scenes at concerts. His horn "Alex", a model 103 from the Alexander Brothers (Mainz) leads a life of its own on Instagram and Facebook and can be seen cooking, reading and vacationing.

Felix Klieser has been teaching his own horn class at the Münster University of Music since 2018. He regularly passes on his knowledge in master classes.

Status: August 2023
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