Hartmut Rohde

Hartmut Rohde thrills audiences with his exceptional variety of sonorities, his stylistic versatility, and his historically informed approach to music ranging from the Baroque to contemporary compositions. Rohde’s performances are captivating due to his sheer power of imagination (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). He is one of the leading and most sought-after European violists. Since 1993 he has held a professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts, and is founding member of the renowned Mozart Piano Quintet which undertakes extensive worldwide tours. His chamber music partners include David Geringas, Janine Jansen, Jörg Widmann, Radovan Vlatkovic, Paul Meyer, Lars Vogt, Kolja Blacher, and Sharon Kam. He has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Seoul Arts Center and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, as well as at a number of outstanding festivals in Berlin, Schleswig-Holstein, Japan, Ravinia (USA), Australia, Heimbach (“Spannungen”), and Jerusalem. Rohde has performed solo viola concertos with renowned orchestras in Munich, Weimar, Bonn, Hannover, and Lithuania, as well as with chamber orchestras from Munich, Lithuania and Basel, collaborating with conductors such as Kent Nagano, Georg Alexander Albrecht, Paavo Järvi, Massimo Zanetti, and Michael Sanderling. Composers of the likes of Brett Dean, Sören N. Eichberg, Ursula Mamlok, Krystof Maratka, Arydas Malcys, David P. Hefti, and Olli Mustonen have written works for him. From 2013 to 2017 he served as Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the NFM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra in Wroclaw. Starting with the 2017/18 season, he is expanding his conducting activities to other orchestras.
Thus in 2019/20 he will go on tour to Vienna (Musikverein), Hamburg (Laeiszhalle), Budapest, Lviv, Slovenia, and Germany with the Budapest Franz Lizst Chamber Orchestra and with Lviv Symphony Orchestra. His appearances as conductor have already led him to perform at the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf, the Pablo Casals Festival in Prades (France), and the Wratislawia Cantans Festival in Wroclaw. He has made numerous international radio recordings, as well as CDs for EMI Classics, Decca, CAvI-music, BMG/Sony, MDG, CPO, and Naxos. In 2004, he won the Supersonic Award. Hartmut Rohde plays a viola by Giuseppe Fiorini and a viola by Ivo Iuliano.