Biography

Austrian pianist Till Fellner’s international career was launched in 1993 when he won First Prize at the renowned Clara Haskil Competition in Vevey, Switzerland. Over more than two decades, he has become a sought-after guest with many of the world’s most important orchestras and at the major music centres of Europe, USA, and Japan, as well as numerous festivals.

During the 2017-18 season, Till Fellner will debut with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach. Other highlights include concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Le Concert Olympique, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Last season, he performed with the Symphony Orchestras from Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Montreal, Vienna, the Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Philharmonia Orchestra London.

Till Fellner has collaborated with Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Herbert Blomstedt, Semyon Bychkov, Christoph von Dohnányi, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Sir Charles Mackerras, Kurt Masur, Kent Nagano, Jonathan Nott, Kirill Petrenko, Claudius Traunfellner, and Hans Zender, among many others.

In chamber music, he regularly collaborates with British tenor Mark Padmore, with whom he premiered a composition by Hans Zender in 2016 and toured Japan in 2017. This collaboration continues in 2017-18, including Lieder recitals in Vienna and Salzburg. He also performs regularly with the Belcea Quartet.

Over the past few years, he has dedicated himself to two milestones of the piano repertoire: The Well-Tempered Clavier of J.S. Bach and the 32 piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven. He performed the Beethoven cycle from 2008 to 2010 in New York, Washington, Tokyo, London, Paris, and Vienna. Contemporary music is also central to him; he has given world premieres of works by Kit Armstrong, Harrison Birtwistle, Thomas Larcher, Alexander Stankovski, and Hans Zender. From 2017-18 onwards, over two seasons, Till Fellner will present an all Schubert cycle (four concerts) at the Schubertiade Festival, Antwerp, Tokyo, Taipei, and other cities.

Till Fellner is an exclusive recording artist for ECM, which has released First Book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, Two & Three-Part Inventions of J.S. Bach, Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Kent Nagano, and a CD of chamber music by Harrison Birtwistle. In 2016, Alpha Classics released his recording of the piano quintet by J. Brahms with the Belcea Quartet, which received the “Diapason d’Or de l’Année”.

In Vienna, Till Fellner studied with Helene Sedo-Stadler before continuing privately with Alfred Brendel, Meira Farkas, Oleg Maisenberg, and Claus-Christian Schuster.

Since autumn 2013, Till Fellner teaches at the Zurich Hochschule der Künste.