Tanja Tetzlaff

Cellist Tanja Tetzlaff is a frequent soloist with major orchestras in her native Germany and abroad. She is also an enthusiastic chamber music player, working with her brother, violinist Christian Tetzlaff, among others. Tetzlaff was born in Hamburg in 1973. She and her older brother Christian grew up in a musical household with parents who had met in a church choir. At 17, Tanja auditioned to study in Salzburg, Austria, with Heinrich Schiff; she was accepted and worked with him at the Salzburg Mozarteum and also with Bernhard Gmelin at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg. A breakthrough for Tetzlaff was a win at the International Music Competition in Vienna, followed in 1994 by another at the ARD Music Competition in Munich, Germany. She made her recording debut in 1996 on the Camerata label with an album of Haydn cello concertos with the Wiener Kammerorchester. Tetzlaff has performed concertos with top orchestras in Germany and abroad, including the Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the Orchestre de Paris, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra. She is an enthusiastic chamber music player, appearing with her brother as part of the Tetzlaff Quartet as well as with such players as violist Tabea Zimmermann, pianist Lars Vogt, and clarinetist Martin Fröst. She served as principal cellist with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and lives in that city with her husband, violinist Florian Donderer, and her family; in 2024, she became professor of cello and chamber music at the Hochschule für Künste there. Tetzlaff's repertory includes not only traditional cello works but also new music, and in 2011, she recorded the difficult Konzert in einem Satz ("Concerto in One Movement") by Wolfgang Rihm. Tetzlaff has recorded for Avi, CAvi-music, and Ondine, among other labels. In 2020, she was heard with the Signum Quartett and other musicians on Lost Prayers, an ECM recording of music by composer Erkki-Sven Tüür. In 2023, she and Christian Tetzlaff recorded the Brahms Double Concerto for violin, cello, and orchestra, Op. 102, with the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin on the Ondine label, and in 2024, she (and Donderer) were heard on the CAvi-music album Serenade for Clarinet & Strings: Krenek, Gál, Penderecki. ~ James Manheim, Rovi