The Road to the Podium

In the classical music world, it’s a rarity: A young musician reaches a level of virtuosity most could only dream of, and a coveted position to match, becoming principal clarinetist with the Berlin Philharmonic. Then—rather than staying for life, like many of his peers—the musician decides to step down after a tenure of just 14 years, setting off to chase a different dream.

Yet last year, that is exactly what Andreas Ottensamer did, surprising his large following and leading to headlines like “Shock: Principal Clarinet Quits Berlin Phil.” He left his position, as is now well known in the industry, because he felt the calling to conduct.

Andreas Ottensamer was principal clarinetist with the Berlin Philharmonic for 14 years. 16 “As much as I love playing in an orchestra, it’s not something I saw myself doing for the rest of my life exclusively. That, I was aware of very early in my musical life,” Andreas tells me when I reach him over Zoom. “And to be true to such a huge endeavor that conducting is, I needed to make time to fully dedicate myself to it. As they say in German, you can’t dance in multiple weddings.”

Andreas is from Vienna, born to a family of Austro-Hungarian musicians. “I was hearing music before I knew what it was,” he tells me, “and making music before I knew what it was.” He started playing piano at 4, taking lessons from his mother, before switching to cello and, later, taking up the clarinet, which some may have seen as fated: His father Ernst was the longtime principal clarinetist for the Vienna Philharmonic, a position now held by Andreas’s brother Daniel.

Clarinet will always be a part of Andreas’s life, whether through his chamber performances or his recordings—both of which have garnered wide acclaim and fandom, and both of which he plans to continue. But in retrospect, his decision to leave the orchestra for the podium shouldn’t have been such a shock.

After all, Andreas had attended Switzerland’s Gstaad Conducting Academy, and in 2021, won its prestigious Neeme Järvi Prize. He’d dedicated himself to studying conducting fulltime during the pandemic shutdown. He’d developed his technique as a conductor by attending masterclasses and workshops, assisting established conductors, building his repertoire with lesser-known orchestras, and simply experimenting.  

He’d also been practicing another difficult discipline: saying no. “If you have a certain name or profile, you can just start if you want,” he says. “The temptation was there, to be honest. Because people will offer you concerts and say, why don’t you try and conduct the second half? And—well—because I had no idea how to.”

We talk about how the same thing happens to young singers taking roles before they’re ready. The way conductors who do the same may go undetected because the musicians themselves are so good, they cover for them. Given the years he’s spent in the pit, Andreas, of course, would know. 

But instead of taking shortcuts, he did the work and, over time, began receiving invitations to conduct major orchestras throughout Europe and beyond. This season, his many engagements include the Oxford Philharmonic, Austria’s Tonkünstler Orchestra, and the Japan Century Symphony. And now, he’s reached another milestone, making his official operatic debut at HGO conducting Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel.

It’s a fitting piece for this seminal moment in Andreas’s career. The opera is full of tunes Austrians are constantly singing and whistling, whether or not they know their origin. “When I started to study it, even I was going, wait a second. This is from the opera? Oh my God,” he laughs. “So it’s beautiful, and it feels very, very close to me.”

Preparing to conduct the opera, Andreas tells me, he’s realized something: “It is, hands down, the best score I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” he says. At first, I think he’s telling me it’s his favorite work. Many, many conductors have said the same. But while he loves the music, Andreas is talking about Humperdinck’s compositional technique.

Andreas’s brother, who has “played this up and down,” once warned him that with Hansel and Gretel, balance is the most important, and the most difficult, thing to achieve. Having seen orchestras struggle with the issue firsthand, Andreas sat down to sort it for himself.

“And then I opened the score, and it’s all written there,” he says. “The problem is not the scoring. The problem is how we play it. In every spot I noted a balance problem, Humperdinck writes fortepiano, respectively giving a dynamic indication to help the singers. In every spot. It’s insane, the accuracy of how he scored it.”

“Come scritto,” I say.

“Come scritto,” he nods, adding: “This is the big challenge, to put this beautiful writing, this beautiful scoring, this beautiful use of text into the right form, stylistically and dynamically. I’ll give it an honest try, together with the orchestra, to really find a way to get as close as possible to the actual score. I’m very excited to see if we can make this happen.”

They will, I tell him, and I know it’s true. What a thing for us in the theater to witness.