Florian Donderer

Florian Donderer (violin), concertmaster of the Estonian Festival Orchestra.

Donderer is praised for playing with “exceptional beauty, breathtaking technique and shocking intensity”, is one of the most interesting musicians of his generation. He is versatile, highly valued as chamber musician, soloist, concertmaster and conductor, collaborating with distinguished musicians such as Paavo Järvi, Viktoria Mullova, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Steven Isserlis, Alexander Lonquich, Matthias Görne and his wife and brother in law, Tanja and Christian Tetzlaff. He is first violin of Signum Quartet, one of the most adventurous and outstanding string quartets of today. Concerts with Signum Quartet have taken him to international podia from Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg to London’s Wigmore Hall and Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. This year’s debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall has been hailed by the press as “one of the highlights of the season.”

Florian Donderer is especially renowned as an artistic leader, directing orchestras from the concertmaster’s desk. He was longstanding concertmaster of one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and was instrumental in defining what has become one of the orchestra’s hallmarks – playing without a conductor. Top orchestras such as Irish Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Kammerorchester Basel, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonietta Rīga, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and Camerata Bern invite him as director and soloist. Florian Donderer is artistic director of Rottweil Musikfestival, one of Germany’s longest standing chamber music festivals. With his wife Tanja Tetzlaff he is curating a chamber music series at Sendesaal Bremen.

He was professor at Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen and regularly gives masterclasses teaching violin, chamber music and orchestra playing, for example at Zurich University of the Arts, Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin, Basel Academy of Music, Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music and Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. He plays a violin built by German violin maker Peter Greiner in 2003 and bows by Nico Plog from Antwerp.

http://www.floriandonderer.de/