Andreas Ottensamer

Andreas Ottensamer has captured audiences and critics alike with his distinct musicianship and versatility as clarinetist, artistic director and conductor.

Ottensamer is considered one of the leading instrumentalists of our time and performs as a clarinet soloist in the major concert halls around the world with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic and the Netherlands Philharmonic under Mariss Jansons, Sir Simon Rattle, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Daniel Harding and Lorenzo Viotti.

He is a regular guest artist at festivals such as the Salzburger Festspiele, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the Rheingau Musik Festival and the Festival de Pâques d’Aix en Provence.

In 2021 Ottensamer gave his debut as a conductor and has been awarded the Neeme Järvi Prize of the Gstaad Festival Conducting Academy.

In the season 2022/23 he made his Asian conducting debut with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and Seoul’s KBS Symphony Orchestra and worked with orchestras such as the MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, the Prag Philharmonia, the Orquestra Gulbenkian in Lisbon, the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, the Real Philharmonia Galicia and the Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse. In the season 23/24 Andreas Ottensamer will return to conduct the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra as well as the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra and give his debuts with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Seoul Philharmonic, the Orchestre Metropolitain Montreal, the Theater Erfurt, the Kammerorchester Zurich, the Münchner Kammerorchester and the Kammerorchester Basel.

Ottensamer is artistic director of the Lotte Festival in Seoul, Korea and the Bürgenstock Festival in Switzerland.

His artistic partnerships as a chamber musician include work with Yuja Wang, Seong-Jin Cho, Lisa Batiashvili, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Phillippe Jaroussky, Gautier Capuçon and Sol Gabetta.

Andreas Ottensamer has an exclusive recording partnership with Deutsche Grammophon since 2013, making him the first ever clarinetist on the Yellow Label. For his album Blue Hour, featuring works of Weber, Mendelssohn and Brahms, he partnered with the Berlin Philharmonic under Mariss Jansons and received his second Opus Klassik award as “Instrumentalist of the year”. Together with Yuja Wang and Gautier Capucon he has recorded Brahms’ clarinet trio, released with DG in September 2022.

Andreas Ottensamer was born in 1989 in Vienna. He comes from an Austro-Hungarian family of musicians and was drawn to music early, receiving his first piano lessons when he was four. At the age of ten he began studying cello at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, then changed to the clarinet in 2003.

In 2009 he interrupted his Harvard undergraduate studies to become a scholar of the Orchestra Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker.
Ottensamer studied conducting with Professor Nicolas Pasquet (Weimar) and has taken masterclasses with Maestri Riccardo Muti and Jaap van Zweden and Professor Johannes Schlaefli (Zürich). He has assisted Maestro Francois-Xavier Roth with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Since March 2011, Ottensamer has held the position of principal clarinetist with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.