Florian Donderer

The violinist, violist, and conductor Florian Donderer, who comes from Berlin, studied in his native city with Bernhard Hartog, in London with David Takeno, and finally again in Berlin with Thomas Brandis at the Berlin Philharmonic’s Orchestra Academy. Early in his career he decided to work with chamber orchestras and made a name for himself as an artistic director from the concertmaster’s chair: first with the Ensemble Oriol and the Chamber Academy Potsdam and then, since 1999, with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. He additionally plays first violin with the Bal-thasar Neumann Ensemble. As a conductor, Donderer is a student of Neeme Järvi, Paavo Järvi, and Leonid Grin. Besides concerts with orchestras with which he is associated as concertmaster, he has also conducted the Festival Strings Lucerne, the Southwest German Chamber Orchestra Pforzheim, the Chamber Academy Neuss, and the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen. From the concertmaster position he has guest conducted the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra Basel, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, and the Camerata Bern. Florian Donderer has appeared as a chamber musician and soloist at the Ultraschall Festival in Berlin, the Musik Triennale Köln, the Beethovenfest Bonn, the Bremen Music Festival, the Pärnu Music Festival in Estonia, and the Bergen Festival in Norway. He also regularly concertizes at Lars Vogt’s Festival “Spannungen” in Heimbach in the Eifel Mountains and is a member of the Süssmann Trio, the Sheridan Ensemble Berlin, and the Berlin Oboe Quartet. Together with the cellist Tanja Tetzlaff, he directs the “residenz@sendesaal” chamber music series in Radio Bremen’s Sendesaal. The CDs that have resulted from this project have won the German Record Critics’ Prize and the Diapason d’Or.

November 2016