Clemens Hagen

Cellist Clemens Hagen was born in Salzburg into a family of musicians. At the age of six he started playing the cello, two years later he was a student of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and then went on to study at the Conservatoire in Basel with Wilfried Tachezi and Heinrich Schiff. In 1983 he received the special award of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Karl-Böhm Award.

Clemens Hagen has performed with many major orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Camerata Academica Salzburg, Radio Symphony Orchestra Freiburg (SWR), Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, NHK Orchestra Tokyo and the Cleveland Orchestra. He has worked with such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Sylvain Cambreling, Daniel Harding, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Manferd Honeck, Ingo Metzmacher, Horst Stein and Franz Welser-Möst.

In June last year Clemens Hagen performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto at Styriarte Graz with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Thomas Zehetmair and Pierre Laurent Aimard. This project was also produced by Warner Classics. He toured Germany with the Houston Symphony Orchestra and Hans Graf. In 2006 Clemens Hagen will return to the Cleveland Orchestra. These concerts will be conducted by Osmo Vänska.

As an important addition to his solo performances and his many concerts with the Hagen Quartet every season he plays chamber music with Martha Argerich, Gidon Kremer, Oleg Maisenberg, Paul Gulda and András Schiff. Next season he will work together with Mitsuko Uchida for the very first time. In November 2005 he is going to perform duo recitals with Itamar Golan in Germany, Amsterdam and Luxembourg.

Last season, Clemens Hagen toured with the Radio Philharmonie Hannover NDR and Eiji Oue, giving concerts in Vienna, Budapest and Zagreb. Furthermore, he performed trio concerts with the Bach: Goldberg Variations (Arrangement Sitkovetsky) together with Mihaela Martin and Nobuko Imai in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Vienna.

Amongst his recordings are the Beethoven Cello Sonatas together with Paul Gulda for JVC Records, and the Brahms Double Concerto with Gidon Kremer and the Concertgebouw Orkest under Nikolaus Harnoncourt for Teldec. Recently, Dabringhaus & Grimm released a CD with chamber music of Brahms and Pfitzner, recorded with Benjamin Schmid and Claudius Tanski.

Clemens Hagen plays an Antonio Stradivari cello from 1698.