Franz Ortner Cello
Franz Ortner was born in Vienna, Austria into a family with a strong musical background. At the age of eleven his musical interests shifted from the piano more and more to the violoncello. In 1996 he was admitted to the cello class of Prof. Wolfgang Herzer (former principal cellist of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra) at the University of Music, Vienna, where he concluded his cello studies with distinction in 2004. Then he spent four years in Berlin, where he continued his studies at the University of Fine Arts with Prof. Wolfgang Boettcher, Martin Löhr (Trio Jean Paul), Tabea Zimmermann and the „Artemis“ Quartett.
Franz Ortner was a prize winner of the International Brahms Competition 2004 and the „Gradus ad Parnassum“ Cello Competition in 2005 and was also a scholarship holder of the Lucerne Festival Academy under Pierre Boulez for two years.
From 2006 to 2009, Franz Ortner was the cello soloist of the Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra in Lisbon (Portugal) and from 2009 to 2014 he was cellist of the Esbjerg Ensemble in Denmark. With the Esbjerg Ensemble he has recorded the cello concerto by Peter Maxwell Davies under the direction of the composer for the Danish Radio in 2009.
Currently he is a member of Musikkollegium Winterthur, Switzerland as well as of Le Concert Olympique, Belgium.
As a soloist, he has appeared with the Philharmonie Bad Reichenhall, the Kammerorchester Rheinland-Pfalz, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and the Musikkollegium Winterthur.
In 2010, together with the pianist Caroline Boirot, Franz Ortner released a CD with works by Brahms, Fuchs, Kirchner and Schumann for the French Label Lyrinx, and in 2011 a live-CD was published with the cello concerto by Antonín Dvořák.
Franz Ortner plays a cello of Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, Paris, 1856.