Cellist Tanja Tetzlaff has been one of the most influential musicians of her generation for decades, both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. Her playing is characterised in particular by a uniquely fine, at the same time powerful and nuanced sound, which is always accompanied by cultivated musicality. Tanja Tetzlaff is particularly interested in going beyond the presentation of classical music to include other art forms and to engage with contemporary events. For her special commitment to bringing the issues of nature conservation and climate change into the concert hall, she was appointed a lifetime ambassador by the German orchestra association ‘Orchester des Wandels’.

In September 2024, Tanja Tetzlaff received the Duisburger Musikpreis for extraordinary achievements in the field of music and musical theatre. Previous winners of this prize include Fazil Say, Carolin Widmann, and Frank Peter Zimmermann. In April 2021, Tanja Tetzlaff was awarded the highly endowed Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship of the city of Weimar. With the prize money, she was able to realise the film project ‘Suites4Nature’, which connects Bach's famous cello suites to nature and issues of climate change. The film premiered in Weimar in April 2023 and was shown at Vienna’s Rathausfilmfest 2023, Beethovenfest Bonn, and Kronberg Festival, among others. This extraordinary project was awarded the Innovation Prize for Sustainability at the Opus Klassik Awards in October 2023. In April 2024, she was also decorated with an International Classical Music Award.

Tanja Tetzlaff's special trademark is her extraordinarily broad repertoire. In addition to the major concertos of the standard cello repertoire, she is particularly fond of the cello concertos by Unsuk Chin, Witold Lutosławski, Jörg Widmann, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and the Double Concerto for Cello & Percussion by Rolf Wallin. In September 2022, she premiered the Double Concerto for Cello & Percussion by Olga Neuwirth with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra and percussionist Hans Kristian Kjos Sørensen.

Over the course of her career, Tanja Tetzlaff has performed with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Philharmonia Orchestra in London, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as well as Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and NHK Symphony Orchestra. She has worked with renowned conductors including Alan Gilbert, Daniel Harding, Philippe Herreweghe, Karina Canellakis, Paavo Järvi, Sir Roger Norrington, and Robin Ticciati.

Chamber music is one of Tanja Tetzlaff’s great passions. She is a founding member of the Tetzlaff Quartett, formed in 1994 with Christian Tetzlaff, Elisabeth Kufferath and Hanna Weinmeister, and since then the quartet have appeared on stages worldwide. Other regular chamber music partners include violinist Florian Donderer, pianist Lauma Skride, the Signum Saxophone Quartet, and a septet led by violinist Franziska Hölscher.

Recordings appear on CAvi, Ars, NEOS, and Ondine, including concertos by Wolfgang Rihm and Ernst Toch. A solo recording with Bach suites and works by Thorsten Encke was released in October 2019.

Tanja Tetzlaff studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg with Professor Bernhard Gmelin and at the Mozarteum Salzburg with Professor Heinrich Schiff. Since the winter semester 2021/22, she has held a professorship in the cello department at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. She plays a cello by Giovanni Baptista Guadagnini from 1776.

SEASON 2024/2025