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Christian Tetzlaff (born 29 April 1966) is a German violinist who has performed internationally, with a focus on chamber music.
Christian Tetzlaff is one of the most sought-after violinists and most exciting musicians on the classical music scene. Concerts with him are often an existential experience for both performer and audience; old familiar works suddenly appear in a completely new light. In addition, he often turns to forgotten masterpieces, such as the Violin Concerto by Joseph Joachim or the Violin Concerto No. 3. 22 by Giovanni Battista Viotti, a contemporary of Mozart and Beethoven. In order to expand his repertoire, he also takes on new important works, such as the Violin Concerto by Jörg Widmann, which he premiered in 2013. With dedication, he develops an unusually extensive repertoire and gives around 100 concerts every year. Since 2023, he has been artistic director of the Spannungsen festival in Heimbach. In the 2024/25 season, Christian Tetzlaff will perform with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Afkham), the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (Storgaards), the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich (Paavo Järvi), the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (Afkham), the hr-Sinfonieorchester (Gardner), the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (Lintu), the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (Emelyanichev), the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Collón) and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Gatti). As a sought-after touring soloist, he performs with the London Philharmonic in Belgium and the Netherlands, with the Potsdam Kammerakademie in six German cities, and joins the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra on stages in Japan, Germany and England. Christian Tetzlaff has been regularly invited as a guest artist to present his musical views over a long period of time, including with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic and the Dresden Philharmonic. In the 2021/22 season, he was given this honor at London's Wigmore Hall, and in the 2022/23 season he was "portrait artist" of the London Symphony Orchestra. In the 2024/25 season, Tetzlaff will be a guest artist at the Rheingau Music Festival, as well as a guest artist at the Kammerakademie Potsdam. Throughout his career, Christian Tetzlaff has performed as a guest with all the great orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and all the London orchestras. He has worked with such legendary masters as Sergiu Celibidache, Bernard Haitink, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur and Christoph von Dohnányi. Close artistic relationships have also been formed with Carina Canellakis, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Andris Nelsons, Sir Simon Rattle, François Xavier Roth, Robin Ticciati, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Barbara Hannigan, Ed Gardner, Ingo Metzmacher and Kent Nagano. In 1994, Christian Tetzlaff founded his own string quartet with his sister, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff, and chamber music is as close to his heart as his work as a soloist. Every year he tours at least once with the Tetzlaff Quartet. This season he will give concerts at the Berlin Philharmonic, the Elbphilharmonie, London's Wigmore Hall, the Cologne Philharmonic, the Luxembourg Philharmonic, and in the United States he will give concerts in New York, San Francisco, Yale University and elsewhere. In 2015, the Tetzlaff Quartet was awarded the Diapason d'or prize, and in 2016 the trio, along with Tetzlaff's sister Tanja and pianist Lars Vogt, was nominated for a GRAMMY Award. The trio's most recent recording of Schubert was released only after Lars Vogt's untimely death and was awarded the OPUS Klassik Prize for best chamber music recording in 2023. This season, Christian Tetzlaff will also perform a duet with Kiveli Dörken in Japan, as well as in a piano trio with his sister Tanja Tetzlaff at the Wigmore Hall and elsewhere. Christian Tetzlaff has also received numerous awards for his recordings, including the "Jahrespreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik" and "Diapason d'or" in 2018, as well as the Midem Classical Award in 2017. Of particular importance to him are the Bach sonatas and partitas, which he recorded for the third time and released in September 2017. Strad magazine praised the recording as "an attentive and lively response to the beauty of Bach's solo parts." In autumn 2019, the Ondine label released recordings of the Beethoven and Sibelius violin concertos, and in August 2022, Brahms and Berg, both with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Robin Ticciati.