The young German violinist
Tobias Feldmann has made a major impact in competitions and on the orchestral and chamber scenes. Even as an educator he is something of a prodigy: appointed to the faculty of the Musikhochscule Würzburg in 2018, he became one of the youngest professors in Germany, not only in music but in any field.
Feldmann was born January 15, 1991 in Fulda, Germany. He showed promise as a small child and was accepted to a children's program at the Musikhochschule Würzburg at the age of eight. He continued to study there through his teens; his teachers were
Herwig Zack and Dan Tulpan.
Feldmann moved on to the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, studying with
Antje Weithaas. Soon after his enrollment there, he began to do well in competitions: in 2011 he took home four prizes, including the First Prize at the International Henri Marteau Competition, and he won the German Music Competition and notched three prizes, including the Audience Award, at the International Joseph Joachim Competition in Hannover the following year. With his name thus placed before concert bookers, he has made solo appearances in Germany, the Low Countries, and the U.S., as well as with the
Bilkent Symphony Orchestra of Ankara, Turkey. In 2015,
Feldmann made his debut at the Philharmonie in Berlin, performing
Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, and he has undertaken concert tours of Latvia and Lithuania with Germany's Bundesjugendorchester Youth Orchestra. He has appeared at major European festivals and played in chamber concerts with a variety of performers.
Feldmann's recording career has had as promising as start as his concertizing. After recording a recital of violin and piano works by
Beethoven,
Ysaÿe,
Waxman, and
Bartók for Germany's Genuin label in
2014, he was signed to Alpha. For that label he recorded another violin and piano recital,
Polychrome, in 2017, with works by
Ravel,
Prokofiev, and
Richard Strauss; the following year saw the release of
Feldmann's
orchestral debut, in the violin concertos of
Sibelius and
Einojuhani Rautavaara, with the
Orchestre Philharmonique Royale de Liège under
Jean-Jacques Kantorow.