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 has performed 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, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the Netherlands Philharmonic under Mariss Jansons, Sir Simon Rattle, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Daniel Harding, and Lorenzo Viotti. He is a regular guest artist at festivals such as the Salzburger Festspiele, the Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival, the Rheingau Musik Festival, and the Festival de Pâques d’Aix-en-Provence and had a five-year residency at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival.

Highlights of the 2024-25 season include recitals at the Concertgebouw with Jose Gollardo, Mupa Budapest with the Kelemen Quartet and at Klosters and Gstaad Festivals. Ottensamer’s artistic partnerships as a chamber musician include work with Yuja Wang, Seong-Jin Cho, Lisa Batiashvili, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Ray Chen, Phillippe Jaroussky, Gautier Capuçon, and Sol Gabetta. He has given recitals in venues such as the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein, Carnegie Hall, Philharmonie Berlin, Philharmonie Essen, Konzerthaus Dortmund, Müpa Budapest, Shanghai Arts Center and Sala São Paolo, to name a few.

An exclusive recording partnership with Deutsche Grammophon, made Ottensamer the first ever clarinettist on the Yellow Label. For his album Blue Hour, featuring the Berlin Philharmonic under Mariss Jansons, he received his second Opus Klassik award as “Instrumentalist of the year” in 2019. Ottensamer’s latest album, with his long-term recital partner José Gallardo, will be released in 2025.

In 2021 Ottensamer made his debut as a conductor and was awarded the Neeme Järvi Prize of the Gstaad Festival Conducting Academy. Since then, he has worked with orchestras such as the NHK Symphony Orchestra, MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Münchener Kammerorchester, Orquestra Gulbenkian Lisbon, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Kammerorchester Basel and Seoul Philharmonic.

Ottensamer is artistic director of the Bürgenstock Festival in Switzerland and the Artström Festival at the Stienitz-Lake near Berlin, Germany. In 2023 he curated the program of the Classic Revolution Festival at the Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul, Korea, consisting of seven symphonic and three chamber music concerts including the KBS Symphony Orchestra and the Seoul Philharmonic.

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 has held the position of principal clarinetist with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra since March 2011.