Andreas Ottensamer
clarinet
Andreas Ottensamer, the Berliner Philharmoniker’s principal clarinet, comes from a family of musicians: his father Ernst Ottensamer was the principal clarinet of the Vienna Philharmonic for a long time until his brother Daniel took over this post. The three musicians performed worldwide as The Clarinotts and recorded several albums.
Nevertheless, the path to the clarinet was by no means without alternative for Andreas Ottensamer: he received his first piano lessons as a four-year-old and began studying the cello at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, in 1999. He had already mastered both instruments to a high competitive level when he finally focused on the clarinet. After further years of study at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts and at Harvard University in the USA, a scholarship from the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker set the course: from July 2010, Andreas Ottensamer was principal clarinet with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin before taking up the same position with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the beginning of March the following year. As a soloist in demand all over the world, he performs with conductors such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Andris Nelsons as well as with chamber music partners such as Sol Gabetta, Leif Ove Andsnes and Yo-Yo Ma. Ottensamer can be heard on numerous recordings and received the ECHO Klassik as Instrumentalist of the Year in 2015. In 2017, the musician was the soloist in Carl Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1 at the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Europakonzert, conducted by Mariss Jansons.
