Biography
"Kilian's clarinet playing, especially in terms of shades and tonal beauty, is breathtaking." Remy Franck, Pizzicatto.lu
The versatile clarinettist Kilian Herold works internationally as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician and is highly regarded as a teacher.
While still a student, Kilian Herold became a partner and principal clarinetist of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in 2004.
Between 2011 and 2016, he was principal clarinetist of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg.
Since the winter semester of 2016, Kilian Herold has been acting as Jörg Widmann's successor as professor of clarinet at the Musikhochschule Freiburg. In addition to supervising his very successful clarinet class - graduates of his class are international prize winners and are members of various cultural orchestras - he also regularly gives master classes. Since 2016 Kilian Herold is artistic director of the international clarinet festival "ClariMondo".
Currently, Kilian Herold is a regular guest as solo clarinettist with top international orchestras, such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. There he works with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Kiril Petrenko, Esa Pekka Salonen, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Francois Xavier Roth and Klaus Mäkelä.
His great passion is chamber music. He performs at various festivals and concert series with musical partners such as Tanja Tetzlaff, Tianwa Yang, Maximilian Hornung, Florian Donderer, Hansjacob Staemmler and the Armida Quartet.
His interest in contemporary music and his close collaboration with artists and composers such as Sarah Maria Sun, Ramon Lazkano, Johannes Schöllhorn and Benjamin Scheuer testify to his versatility and desire to discover new musical territory.
In addition to the classical clarinet repertoire, Kilian Herold also shows great interest in repertoire discoveries for his instrument. In recent years, for example, he has produced several excellent CD productions on the CAvi label: a portrait of the Jewish-Hungarian composer Mátyás Seiber, a CD with works by Felix Draeseke, Carl Reinecke and Johannes Brahms, and a trio CD with the clarinet trios of Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Schöllhorn. His latest project "Vienna 1913" together with pianist Hansjacob Staemmler includes works by Berg, Korngold, Brahms as well as the world premiere recording of the clarinet sonata by Egon Kornauth.
