Biography
“Ottensamer conducts without a baton, using eye contact and clear body language to convey changes in dynamic, tempo or expression … With smiles on their faces and palpable enjoyment, the musicians of the Mozarteumorchester translate his eloquent gestures into elegant music.”
Passauer Neue Presse, on Ottensamer’s debut with the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg at the 2025 Mozartwoche
Having already made a name for himself as a virtuosic soloist and chamber musician as well as principal clarinet of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Andreas Ottensamer has also now established himself as an equally gifted and sought-after conductor. In January 2025 he stepped down from his Berlin post after 14 years in order to focus on his conducting activities. He will still pursue his work as a solo clarinettist and in chamber music, bringing his eloquence, peerless technique and beauty of sound to the lyrical, heartfelt performances for which he has long been renowned. Ottensamer also continues as co-Artistic Director of the Bürgenstock Festival in Switzerland, alongside pianist José Gallardo. He has a long-standing chamber partnership with Gallardo, with other regular chamber collaborators including such leading artists as Lisa Batiashvili, Gautier Capuçon, Sol Gabetta and Yuja Wang.
In March 2013 Andreas Ottensamer became the first clarinettist ever to sign an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. His debut disc for the Yellow Label, Portraits – The Clarinet Album, released three months later, included readings of concertos by Cimarosa, Spohr and Copland, made with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The album also contained miniatures by Gershwin, Debussy and Amy Beach. It was followed in 2015 by Brahms – The Hungarian Connection, a personal exploration of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet presented in the context of works inspired by Hungarian folk music. The album was recognised with an ECHO Klassik “Instrumentalist of the Year” award.
Released in 2017, New Era featured Ottensamer’s performances of concertos by father and son Johann and Carl Stamitz, Danzi’s Concertino for clarinet and bassoon (with Albrecht Mayer), and two reworkings of arias from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The clarinettist also joined Nemanja Radulović to record Khachaturian’s Trio for violin, clarinet and piano for the latter’s DG album Baïka, released in November 2018.
Ottensamer’s next album was Blue Hour, which came out in 2019 and presented arrangements of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words and pieces by Brahms for clarinet and piano, recorded in company with Yuja Wang, as well as his account of Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No.1 in F minor, recorded with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Mariss Jansons. Blue Hour won him the Opus Klassik “Instrumentalist of the Year” award.
In 2022 Ottensamer teamed up with both Yuja Wang and cellist Gautier Capuçon. Together the trio released Works by Sergei Rachmaninoff & Johannes Brahms, featuring their interpretations of Brahms’s Clarinet Trio Op. 114 and Cello Sonata No.1 Op. 38, and Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata Op. 19.
Ottensamer’s latest DG album is Romanza, which was recorded with José Gallardo and presents works by Brahms, Debussy, Gershwin, Poulenc, Rachmaninoff, Rota and more. Some of the pieces were written expressly for clarinet and piano, others are transcriptions, several of them realised by the clarinettist himself. Romanza will be released digitally on 30 May 2025.
Recent and forthcoming highlights of Ottensamer’s 2024–25 schedule include his US conducting debut with the Naples Philharmonic in Florida; a summer-themed programme at the helm of the Grazer Philharmoniker for the closing night of the orchestra’s season (20 May 2025); a recital with José Gallardo at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw (23 May); a concert at the Mozartfest Würzburg in which he conducts his brother Daniel Ottensamer in Spohr’s Clarinet Concerto No. 4 (5 June); chamber performances with Gallardo and friends at the Bürgenstock Festival (6/7 June); concerts on tour in Japan in which he conducts the Kobe Philharmonic and Sendai Philharmonic (12/18/19 July); and performances of Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel at the Liszt Academy in Budapest (24–26 July).
Andreas Ottensamer was born in Vienna in April 1989 into a distinguished family of Austro-Hungarian musicians. His father Ernst was principal clarinet of the orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper, then of the Wiener Philharmoniker, a role now held by Andreas’s older brother Daniel. Andreas took piano lessons before studying cello at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts. In 2003 he began clarinet lessons with Johann Hindler, a member of the Wiener Philharmoniker. His progress was so rapid that he formed an ensemble with his father and brother (The Clarinotts) just two years later.
Ottensamer’s decision to switch from cello to clarinet was rewarded by competition successes and, at the age of 16, a first appearance as substitute with the orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper. After finishing school in Vienna, he enrolled as an undergraduate at Harvard University but interrupted his studies there to become a scholar of the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Orchestra Academy in October 2009. He launched his orchestral career the following year as principal clarinet of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and was appointed in March 2011 to the same position with the Berliner Philharmoniker.
He began his work as a conductor a decade later, and was awarded the Gstaad Conducting Academy’s 2021 Neeme Järvi Prize. Ottensamer went on to work with Riccardo Muti on Verdi’s Requiem (Ravenna, 2022) and Un ballo in maschera (Tokyo Spring Festival, 2023). In 2024 he assisted Sir Simon Rattle with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks in repertoire including the world premiere of Thomas Adès’s Aquifer, and Christian Thielemann on a production of Lohengrin at the Wiener Staatsoper. The ever-growing list of orchestras he has conducted includes the Basel Sinfonieorchester, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Münchener Kammerorchester, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal, Seoul Philharmonic, Sinfonietta Cracovia and Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, among many more.
5/2025