Felix Klieser - Horn

BIOGRAPHY 2022/2023

"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.

Highlights of the 2022/2023 season are Felix Klieser's debut at the Vienna Musikverein and two touring projects. He will continue his successful collaboration with the Swiss chamber orchestra Festival Strings Lucerne and will perform for the first time with the Prague Symphony Orchestra in Prague and Munich, among other places.

Felix Klieser's residency with the British Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is entering its second round: after wowing audiences and the press alike last season, he is devoting himself increasingly to music education in addition to two symphony concerts and a chamber music project with newly acquired orchestral friends.

After the successful German premiere of the horn concerto "Soundscape" (Rolf Martinsson), dedicated to him, the work celebrates its premiere in Italy and Sweden. Thus, Felix Klieser returns to the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano under the direction of conductor Alondra de la Parra and makes his Swedish debut with the Norrlandsoperan Symphony Orchestra.

This season, the passionate chamber music enthusiast can also be experienced in many places with various chamber music partners and increasingly appears as a sought-after discussion partner in panel discussions on topics such as diversity, motivation and inclusion.

As a member of the project ensemble "The Impossible Orchestra" of conductor Alondra de la Parra, Felix Klieser played in the first edition of the Pax Festival in Mexico in the summer of 2022. The cast of the virtual orchestra created during the corona pandemic includes Rolando Villazón, Alisa Weilerstein, Edicson Ruiz, Albrecht Mayer and Maxim Vengerov. In Mexico, the musicians of the "Impossible Orchestra" can be seen live together for the first time after their digital success

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.

From 2008 till 2011 he was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Germany (Bundesjugendorchester), where he frequently performed at major venues such as Berlin Philharmonie, Beethovenhalle Bonn, Köln Philharmonie and Philharmonie am Gasteig Munich. He also participated in numerous productions by Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) and has undertaken tours to Austria, Switzerland, Italy and South Africa.

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.