Valerie Fritz
CelloNominated by Elbphilharmonie & Laeiszhalle Hamburg Bozar Brussels Casa da Música Porto Kölner Philharmonie Konzerthaus Dortmund Musikverein Wien Season 2025-2026
Photo © Thomas Nikolaus Schrott
The Austrian cellist Valerie Fritz is an explorer on her instrument. From electronics to gut strings, from the classical to the contemporary repertoire, she approaches a composition both with an open mind and a close attention to detail. She communicates with audiences in a similar way, curating her own concert programs and inventing new performance formats. Each of the styles in her wide repertoire benefits from her feeling for the whole.
As a soloist or a chamber musician, Valerie Fritz has performed at festivals such as Salzburg Festival, Klangspuren Schwaz, the Schumannfest of the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, and listening closely. She has prepared her repertoire in close contact with composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Georg Friedrich Haas and Thomas Larcher. In the 2025/26 season she will be heard in Europe’s concert halls as an ECHO Rising Star. She is a member of Ensemble NAMES – winner of the Ernst von Siemens ensemble prize – and plays regularly with the Camerata Salzburg. “I’m not the sort to think in extremely technical terms – that all goes over my head,” she says. “To me, the most important thing is how it should sound. From there, I explore the work on my instrument and figure out how to do it justice.”
Valerie Fritz is a winner of the Berlin Prize for Young Artists and of the Mainardi Cello Competition and is a scholarship holder of the concerto21 foundation. She studied cello at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Clemens Hagen and Giovanni Gnocchi. As the head of the International Society for Contemporary Music, Section Tirol, Austria, she also curates the concert series noiz//elektrorauschen. In workshops at schools and universities, she shares her fascination with new sounds with children and youth.
Valerie Fritz made her first forays into contemporary music as a child: At the age of eight, her mother composed her a piece, titled “Geisterstunde” (“The Witching Hour”), which introduced Valerie Fritz to contemporary music techniques. Since then, she has performed with the European Union Youth Orchestra and the orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy and taken part in the International Music Institute in Darmstadt and in the International Ensemble Modern Academy – a range of institutions which shows her versatility as an artist. On stage today, Valerie Fritz sees herself as a sort of musical tour guide, sharing enthusiasm, knowledge, and her own experiences with the audience while giving the listener space to explore at her own pace. “I don’t want to say that a concert should ‘touch’ me, that sounds too romantic,” she says, “but I want to come out of it different from how I went in.”
