Claudio Bohórquez

cello

1994
Cello Masterclasses, Landgrave of Hesse Prize
1995, 2001, 2005, 2009
Cello Festival, concert
2000
International Pablo Casals Cello Competition, 1st prize
2002
Chamber Music Connects the World, junior
2003, 2004, 2011
Mit Musik – Miteinander, tutor
2004, 2010
Chamber Music Connects the World, guest
2013, 2015, 2017
Alumni Meeting
2013, 2019
Kronberg Festival, concert

Claudio Bohórquez, descent of Peruvian and Uruguayan ancestors, has been hailed as one of the most exciting and fascinating musicians of his generation by conductors, audiences, concert presenters and critics alike.His recent tour with the National Symphony Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach with concerts in Washington and Latin America was a huge success. He played “unforgettably and excellent” and his interpretation of the Lalo Cello concert was “the most beautiful I have ever heard”, wrote a Washington Post critic. In the 2012/2013 season Claudio Bohórquez was able to display his talent as chamber musician: he appeared in Madrid and Bilbao together with Jörg Widmann and Katia Skanavi and performed piano trios by Beethoven with Viviane Hagner and Jonathan Gilad during the Beethoven Marathon at Konzerthaus Berlin.

As a student of Boris Pergamenschikow, Claudio Bohórquez achieved success at an early age at international competitions such as the Tschaikowsky Youth Competition in Moscow and the Rostropovich Cello Competition in Paris. This culminated in 2000 with three awards at the first International Pablo Casals Competition held under the auspices of the Kronberg Academy: Marta Casals Istomin presented Claudio Bohórquez with first prize, a special award for the best chamber music, and also the use of Casals’ Gofriller cello for a period of two years. He also won first prize at the International Music Competition in Geneva, an achievement that marked the start of his career as a soloist. Meanwhile he has become a teacher himself: since 2003 he is guest professor at the 'Hanns Eisler' Academy of Music in Berlin and was appointed as Professor at the Stuttgart Music Academy in autumn 2011.

Claudio Bohórquez has performed with the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, almost all of the German Radio Orchestras, the Württembergischen Kammerorchester Heilbronn, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Collegium Musicum Basel, the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestre de Toulouse, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Russian National Orchestra and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. In Japan he has appeared with both the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. In the United States he has recently performed concerts with the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Renowned conductors with whom Claudio Bohórquez has worked include Daniel Barenboim, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jonathan Darlington, Thomas Dausgaard, Christoph Eschenbach, Hans Graf, Ruben Gazarian, Manfred Honeck, Yakov Kreizberg, Sir Neville Marriner, Eiji Oue, Krzysztof Penderecki, Leonard Slatkin, Tugan Sokhiev, Lothar Zagrosek and David Zinman.

Claudio Bohórquez has been invited to numerous festivals as a guest performer, including the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, the City of London Festival, the Penderecki Festival in Warsaw and the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival. Appearances in the United States have included performances at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen festivals and the Hollywood Bowl. He also took part in the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in Austria and Gidon Kremer's “Les Musiques” festival in Basel. As a passionate chamber musician he has performed together with Katia Skanavi and Jörg Widmann in Bilbao/Madrid, and with Viviane Hagner and Jonathan Gilad at the Beethoven Marathon at Konzerthaus Berlin.

In addition to numerous CD recordings, radio recordings and television appearances Claudio Bohórquez performed on Paul Englishby's soundtrack of the film “Ten Minutes Older - The Cello”, which was seen in cinemas around the world. Claudio Bohórquez has also worked with artist Klaus-Peter Kirchner on “Room for Pablo Casals”, a work dedicated to the great cellist combining words, sounds and images. 
He was part of the ECHO-winning album “Four Seasons” (2017) of Daniel Hope, released by Deutsche Grammophon.

Since the season 2017/18 Claudio Bohórquez is Artistic Director of the Festival Winnenden.

Claudio Bohórquez plays a G. B. Rogeri violoncello presented to him by the Landeskreditbank Baden-Württemberg.


Last updated: February 2020