Cellist Tanja Tetzlaff has been one of the most influential musicians of her generation for decades, both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. Her playing is characterised in particular by a uniquely fine, at the same time powerful and nuanced sound, which is always accompanied by cultivated musicality. Tanja Tetzlaff is particularly interested in going beyond the presentation of classical music to include other art forms and to engage with contemporary events. For her special commitment to bringing the issues of nature conservation and climate change into the concert hall, she was appointed a lifetime ambassador by the German orchestra association »Orchester des Wandels«.

In April 2021, Tanja Tetzlaff was awarded the highly endowed Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship of the city of Weimar. With the prize money, she was able to realise the film project »Suites4Nature«, which relates Bach’s famous cello suites to nature and issues of climate change. The film had its premiere in Weimar in April 2023 and was shown at the Vienna Film Festival, Bonn Beethovenfest, Kronberg Festival and in various cinemas, among others. This extraordinary project was crowned with the Innovation Prize for Sustainability at the Opus Klassik Awards in October 2023.

Tanja Tetzlaff’s special trademark is her extraordinarily broad repertoire. In addition to the major concertos of the standard cello repertoire, she is particularly fond of the cello concertos by Unsuk Chin, Witold Lutosławski, Jörg Widmann and Bernd Alois Zimmermann.

Over the course of her career, Tanja Tetzlaff has performed with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Philharmonia Orchestra in London, Orchestre de Paris, as well as Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and NHK Symphony Orchestra. She has worked with renowned conductors including Alan Gilbert, Daniel Harding, Philippe Herreweghe, Karina Canellakis, Paavo Järvi, and Sir Roger Norrington.

Chamber music is a great passion of Tanja Tetzlaff. She is a founding member of the Tetzlaff Quartett, formed in 1994 together with Christian Tetzlaff, Elisabeth Kufferath and Hanna Weinmeister, and since then the quartet have appeared on stages worldwide. Other regular chamber music partners include pianist Lauma Skride and the Signum Saxophone Quartet.

Recordings appear on CAvi, Ars, NEOS and Ondine, including concertos by Wolfgang Rihm and Ernst Toch. A solo recording with Bach suites and works by Thorsten Encke was released in October 2019.

Tanja Tetzlaff studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg with Professor Bernhard Gmelin and at the Mozarteum Salzburg with Professor Heinrich Schiff. Since the winter semester 2021/22, she has held a professorship in the cello department at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. She plays a cello by Giovanni Baptista Guadagnini from 1776.