Nicolas Altstaedt © Marco Borggreve
Nicolas Altstaedt
German-French cellist Nicolas Altstaedt is one of the most sought after and versatile artists today. As a soloist, conductor and artistic director, he performs repertoire spanning from early music to the contemporary, playing on period and modern instruments.
Nicolas Altstaedt was Artist in Focus at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt and Artist in Residence at the SWR Symphonieorchester with Teodor Currentzis in 2019/20. Other recent highlights included concerto debuts with the Detroit and Washington’s National Symphony Orchestras, NHK and Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra, a tour with B’Rock and René Jacobs. During the 2017/18 season, Nicolas gave the highly acclaimed Finnish Premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto under the baton of the composer at the Helsinki Festival and was Artist in Spotlight at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. The season 2021/22 includes debuts with the London and Munich Philharmonic, Bayrischer Rundfunk, National Orchestra of Spain and tours with l’Orchestre des Champs-Elysées and Philippe Herreweghe as well as the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and Dmitri Slobodeniouk, and reinvitations including to the NHK Symphony Orchestra.
Nicolas Altstaedt performs regularly with the most renowned orchestras around the world, including the Vienna Philharmonic and Symphoniker, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, OPRF and ONF Paris, and all BBC orchestras with conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Sir Roger Norrington, Lahav Shani, François-Xavier Roth, Robin Ticciati as well as with orchestras of historical performance practice such as Il Giardino Armonico under Giovanni Antonini, Andrea Marcon and Jonathan Cohen.
As a conductor, he works closely with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and conducted in recent seasons the SWR, OPRF Paris, Aurora and Munich chamber orchestras.
Joint appearances with composers such as Thomas Adès, Jörg Widmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Thomas Larcher, Fazil Say and Sofia Gubaidulina also consolidate his reputation as an outstanding interpreter of contemporary music.
Sebastian Fagerlund, Helena Winkelman and Fazil Say have recently written concertos for Nicolas.
In 2012 Nicolas Altstaedt succeeded Gidon Kremer as artistic director of the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, and in 2014 he succeeded Ádám Fischer in this position at the Haydn Philharmonic.
As a chamber musician, Nicolas’ regular partners include Janine Jansen, Vilde Frang, Pekka Kuusisto, Lawrence Power, Antoine Tamestit, Alexander Lonquich, Jean Rondeau and the Quatuor Ébène. He performs at both Salzburg Mozart and Summer Festival, Verbier, BBC Proms, Lucerne, Prague Spring Festival and Musikfest Bremen.
He has received numerous prizes including the Beethovenring Bonn 2015 and Musikpreis der Stadt Duisburg 2018. His most recent recording for his Lockenhaus Festival garnered the BBC Music Magazine 2020 Chamber Award and Grammophone Award 2020. He received the BBC Music Magazine Concerto Award 2017 for his recording of CPE Bach Concertos on Hyperion with Arcangelo and Jonathan Cohen and the Edison Klassiek 2017 for his Recital Recording with Fazil Say on Warner Classics. Nicolas is a recipient of the Credit Suisse Award in 2010 and was a BBC New Generation Artist 2010-2012
As of June 2021