Christian Poltéra

Swiss cellist Christian Poltéra began his studies with Nancy Chumachenco and continued with Boris Pergamenschikow and Heinrich Schiff in Salzburg and Vienna. In 2004, he was awarded the Borletti-Buitoni Foundation Prize in London and named a BBC New Generation Artist.

Invitations from renowned orchestras take him all over the world. He has performed with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Oslo Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, working with conductors such as Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Paavo Järvi and Andris Nelsons.
As well as his performances as a soloist, Christian Poltéra is a devoted chamber musician. His concerts with Trio Zimmermann, alongside Frank Peter Zimmermann and Antoine Tamestit, are an integral part of his international concert work. He also performs alongside colleagues such as Mitsuko Uchida, Gidon Kremer, Lars Vogt, Leif Ove Andsnes, Isabelle Faust and Ronald Brautigam.
He appears regularly at major international festivals, including the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Musikfest in Berlin, the Vienna Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the BBC Proms.
Christian Poltéra’s highly acclaimed recordings reflect his diverse and extensive repertoire, including award-winning CDs of the cello concertos by Dvořák, Walton, Ligeti, Barber and Dutilleux, as well as sonatas by Mendelssohn, Fauré and Saint-Saëns. In 2017 BIS released an album featuring his performances of Shostakovich and Martinů’s Second Cello Concertos with the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin and Gilbert Varga. This season, he recorded Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante and both of the Haydn Cello Concertos.

Christian Poltéra has been artistic director of the Chamber Music Days at the Bergkirche St Michael zu Büsingen since 2013. He is also a lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and regularly gives masterclasses.

He plays a cello by Antonio Casini from 1675 and the legendary 1711 ‘Mara’ Stradivarius.