Prof. Thorsten Johanns

Born in 1976, Thorsten Johanns received clarinet and saxophone lessons from his Hungarian teacher László Dömötör from the age of eight. He went on to study the clarinet with Prof. Ralph Manno at the Musikhochschule in Cologne. Aged only 25, Thorsten Johanns was appointed principal clarinettist with the WDR-Sinfonieorchester Cologne.

As a soloist, he has worked with conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner, Semyon Bychkov, Eivind Aadland, and Yutaka Sado, and he is a welcome guest with renowned ensembles and orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the NDR-Sinfonieorchester Hamburg, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Ensemble Modern Frankfurt.

Thorsten Johanns is the first and (presently) the only German clarinettist to have been invited to New York by principal conductor Alan Gilbert in order to perform with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He appears at numerous international festivals in Germany, Sweden, and Finland as a soloist and member of various chamber music ensembles; he has also repeatedly followed Heinz Holliger's personal invitation to appear at the Ittinger Pfingstkonzerte (Switzerland).

Thorsten Johanns has been part of many successful CD productions, and was awarded an ECHO-Klassik for his recording of Mozart's Don Giovanni with the ensemble 'opera senza' in 2008. From 2010 to 2014, he held an appointment as clarinet tutor at the Maastricht conservatoire. In 2014, Thorsten Johanns was appointed Professor of Clarinet at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar.