Austrian Pianist Till Fellner plays with scrupulous musicianship, purity of style, and sparkling keyboard command—qualities that have earned him acclaim throughout Europe, the United States, and Japan. His readings of the works of Bach and Beethoven in particular have placed him among the elect in this repertoire, and the inspired ingenuity of his performances of such 20th century masters as György Kurtág, Harrison Birtwistle, and Elliott Carter have earned him many accolades.

Mr. Fellner starts the 2017-18 season with a return to the Montreal Symphony; after successful performances at Maison symphonique last year, he will perform Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy for solo piano and chorus with the Montreal Symphony Chorus. In November, he will tour with Le Concert Olympique and conductor Jan Caeyers, with performances of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in C-Major, op. 56 in Antwerp, Brussels, Leuven, Hasselt, Aken, Ludwigsburg, and Vienna; he will be joined by violinist Antje Weithaas and cellist Maximilian Hornung. April will bring Mr. Fellner to New York for his debut with the New York Philharmonic, featuring Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22 under conductor Christoph Eschenbach. Additional orchestral engagements include appearances in Salzburg, Extremadura, Toulon, and Rotterdam. Mr. Fellner will also give solo recitals in Vienna, Neubeuern, Vevey, Antwerp, Lörrach, Celle, and Paris.

Till Fellner’s 2016-17 season included performances not only with the Montreal Symphony and Kent Nagano, but also with the Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin under Maestro Nagano, Konzerthausorchester Berlin under the baton of Ivan Fischer, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra with Manfred Honeck, and Philharmonia Orchestra London under Christoph von Dohnányi.

During the 2015-16 season, Mr. Fellner made his highly acclaimed debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, led by Bernard Haitink. Other highlights included concerts with NHK Symphony Orchestra with conductor Herbert Blomstedt, Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Bernard Haitink, Academy of St Martin in the Fields with Sir Neville Marriner, and Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Manfred Honeck.

An avid chamber musician as well as vocal accompanist, Till Fellner regularly collaborates with the British tenor Mark Padmore, with whom he gave the first performance of a composition by Hans Zender in January 2016. In addition Fellner and Padmore also performed lieder recitals in Germany, Tokyo, and Seoul. Mr. Fellner and Mr. Padmore will continue their lieder recital tour in the fall of 2017 with engagements in Tetbury, Norwich, Maribor, D’Iandsberg, and Vienna. The Belcea Quartet invited Mr. Fellner to join them in the Brahms Piano Quintet on a tour of major cities throughout Europe; they also made a recording of this work.

The 2014-15 season saw Mr. Fellner performing all across Europe as well as in Japan, and North and South America. He began the season with an extended, three-continent, 17-concert solo recital tour, including performances at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg Festival in Austria, a series of concerts in Japan, and a recital and masterclass at Le Domaine Forget Festival in Québec. In November, Mr. Fellner joined Mark Padmore on a Lieder recital tour that included performances at Vienna’s Musikverein and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. In addition Fellner gave solo recitals including performances in Brussels, Rotterdam, Graz, Paris (Théâtre des Champs-Elysées), Vienna (Konzerthaus), and at Wigmore Hall in London. As a soloist with orchestra, Mr. Fellner joined the Philharmonia Orchestra and Kirill Petrenko for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 at London’s Royal Festival Hall; the Orchestre de la Chambre de Lausanne and Heinz Holliger for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in Lausanne; and the Camerata Salzburg with Louis Langrée for an extended tour of Mexico and Columbia, also with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23. In March 2015, Mr. Fellner returned to Canada and the USA for his Toronto recital debut and concerts in Waterloo, ON, Beacon, NY, and Washington, DC. In his review of the latter concert, Charles Downey praised Mr. Fellner’s performance in The Washington Post:

In Mozart’s Rondo No. 3 in A minor, K. 511, and in Piano Sonata in E-flat, K. 282, Fellner played his trump card, a delicacy of touch that created endless shades of soft and ultra-musical phrasing.... Four preludes and fugues from the second book of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” were richly colored: No. 10 in E minor breathless and brilliant, and the tragic No. 12 in F minor a gorgeous tapestry of carefully woven threads.

From 2008 to 2010 Mr. Fellner undertook a worldwide cycle of all 32 Beethoven solo piano sonatas, a tour de force which brought him recognition internationally as a musician of the first order. In reviewing Mr. Fellner’s February 2010 recital of Beethoven sonatas at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art – at the half-way mark of his seven-concert cycle – New York Times senior critic Anthony Tommasini reported that the pianist’s performances emphasized “structural coherence, proportion, textural clarity, dynamic balance, rhythmic integrity and other hallmarks of the Classical style.” These comments went far to confirm the fact that Till Fellner has become a master of the most indispensable core repertoire of the entire piano literature.

Positive commentary on Mr. Fellner’s live Beethoven performances have carried over into his recent recordings for ECM of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos. 4 and 5 with Kent Nagano leading the Montréal Symphony Orchestra. 

Words are inadequate to describe the sheer joy I experienced at hearing this disc…an ineffable poetry and grace illuminate their reading [Concerto No. 4]…in Fellner and Nagano’s hands the “Emperor” takes on the character of a true ensemble piece, as opposed to being presented…as a virtuoso display piece.  It’s a winning performance that reveals many winning felicities…
– Jerry Dubins, Fanfare

The give and take between Fellner and the Montréal Symphony Orchestra is uncanny, in that they seem to be questioning or replying to one another as if only two individuals were concerned.
– Michael Tanner, BBC Music Magazine, 5 star rating

Till Fellner has an impressive discography to his credit on the EMI, Claves, Erato, Philips, and ECM labels, the most recent release being a CD of Harrison Birtwistle’s Chamber Music with Lisa Batiashvili, Adrian Brendel, and Roderick Williams on ECM. Fellner also appears on an ECM album of new works by Thomas Larcher, and his recording of Bach’s Two- and Three-Part Inventions and French Suite No.V, has received widespread critical praise, in keeping with his acclaimed ECM recording of the first book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. According to Sequenza 21, “Till Fellner’s recording of the Inventions on ECM is a reminder of how wondrous these works are …Not only is his technical execution of them brilliant—his whirlwind traversals of the D-minor and F-major Inventions are stunners—but Fellner also approaches the works with an eye towards structure… terraced dynamics and fastidious articulations.”

Fellner has also recorded Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 19, 22, and 25; Beethoven’s Concertos Nos. 2 & 3; a selection of Beethoven piano sonatas; Beethoven’s works for cello and piano (with Heinrich Schiff), Schubert’s Sonata in A minor D.784 plus 6 Moments musicaux, 4 Impromptus and 12 Waltzes; Schumann’s “Kreisleriana,” Op. 16; and Schönberg’s Suite for Piano, Op. 25.

The list of collaborators during Mr. Fellner’s international career reads like a “Who’s Who” of classical music; he has appeared as guest soloist with many of the world's foremost orchestras and has worked with such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Herbert Blomstedt, Christoph von Dohnányi, Bernard Haitink, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Manfred Honeck, Sir Charles Mackerras, Kurt Masur, Kent Nagano, Semyon Bychkov, Leonard Slatkin, and Lothar Zagrosek, among many others.

Mr. Fellner first came to world attention in 1993 by winning First Prize at the important Clara Haskil International Piano Competition at Vevey, Switzerland. He was a student of Helene Sedo-Stadler before going on to study privately with Alfred Brendel, Meira Farkas, Oleg Maisenberg, and Claus-Christian Schuster.