Stefan Dohr

The horn player Stefan Dohr represents his instrument like no other: as an acclaimed soloist, chamber musician and principal horn of the Berlin Philharmonic, he is an icon of the international horn landscape and performs at all the important concert venues worldwide, both in well-known works from the horn literature and in contemporary compositions.

Highlights of the 2025/26 season included performances of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s new Horn Concerto under the baton of the composer with the Orchestre de Paris at the Lucerne Festival, the Musikfest Berlin and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, as well as with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Filarmonica della Scala. He also performed Isidora Žebeljan’s unfinished horn concerto Dance of Wooden Sticks and Veljko Nenadić’s new commission Temples of Moesia with the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra.

As a soloist, he has performed with orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, under conductors including Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Gimeno, Bernard Haitink, Paavo and Neeme Järvi, Simon Rattle and Christian Thielemann. He gave the UK premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s Horn Concerto at the BBC Proms, and played a pivotal role in shaping a season of the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, which notably included the world premiere of Steingrímur Rohloff’s Horn Concerto.

His artistic curiosity and exceptional technical versatility have inspired numerous composers. This has led to important additions to the horn repertory such as Toshio Hosokawa’s Moment of Blossoming (2011), Wolfgang Rihm’s Horn Concerto (2014) and compositions by Herbert Willi, Jorge E. López, Johannes Wallmann and Bo Dai, as well as Jörg Widmann’s Horn Concerto, which he premiered in 2024.

He is also internationally in demand as a chamber musician. He has performed in concert with musicians including Kolja Blacher, Ian Bostridge, Kirill Gerstein, Mark Padmore, Maurizio Pollini and Carolin Widmann.

Stefan Dohr studied in Essen and Cologne. He was principal horn in the Frankfurt Opern and Museumsorchester, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, before moving to the Berlin Philharmonic in 1993.

He gives masterclasses worldwide and is currently a visiting professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music.