Germany’s most promising cellist Benedict Kloeckner (1989) plays concerts with renowned orchestras such as the German Radio Philharmonic, the NDR and the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Kremerata Baltica, the Slovak Radio Orchestra and the Russian and Polish State Philharmonic Orchestras under conductors such as Simon Gaudenz, Howard Griffiths, Michael Sanderling, Karl Heinz Steffens and Heinrich Schiff. He performs all over Europe, USA and South America at such venues as the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, Carnegie Hall New York(Isaac Stern Hall), the Tonhalle Zurich, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Musikverein Wien and the Arts Center Seoul.

 

He plays chamber music with artists like Emanuel Ax, Christoph Eschenbach, Gidon Kremer, Anne Sophie Mutter and Sir Andras Schiff. He is the winner of major international competitions such as the European Broadcasting Union Award in Bratislava, the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann cello competition in Berlin, the Animato International Soloist Competition in Zurich, the “Nicolas Firmenich Prize” of the Verbier Festival (CH) and the “First Manhattan International Music Competition New York”. Furthermore he received the “European Culture Prize” awarded by the “European Culture Foundation”.

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Benedict Kloeckner regularly collaborates with contemporary composers, including Eric Tanguy and Wolfgang Rihm, (whose Cello Concerto “Temptation” he performed in Munich) as well as Howard Blake, who composed a cello sonata for him. In celebration of his 75th birthday, Howard Blake invited Kloeckner to record his entire repertoire for cello and piano, with himself, for Genuin in cooperation with the SWR. His six previously published CD recordings, including Robert Schumann’s cello concerto, have been highly praised by the international press, nominated for the prize of the German Record Critics and emerged in collaboration with artists such as Gidon Kremer, the conductors Heinrich Schiff and Michael Sanderling, the pianists José Gallardo and Anna Fedorova, and the composer and pianist Howard Blake.

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Since September 2014 Benedict Kloeckner is the artistic director and founder of the “International Music Festival Koblenz” presenting highest level chamber music concerts with artists like Vilde Frang, Anna Fedorova, José Gallardo, Danjulo Ishizaka and Linus Roth.

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Benedict Kloeckner received his artistic training from Martin Ostertag and as a young soloist of Kronberg Academy Masters with Frans Helmerson and Gary Hoffman, graciously financed by the “Angela Winkler-Scholarship”, since October 2009. He plays an Italian Cello by Francesco Rugeri (Cremona 1680) kindly on loan to him by the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.