Andrei Ioniță
cello
Andrei Ioniță won First Prize at the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition, and prizes at the ARD, Feuermann, and Khachaturian competitions. He was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2016-18 and is the Symphoniker Hamburg’s artist-in-residence for the 2019/20 season.
In addition to concerts in Hamburg, 2019/20 will see Andrei debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra (with Gergely Madaras), Detroit Symphony (Elena Schwarz), Dresden Philharmonie (Krzysztof Penderecki), Bournemouth Symphony (Marta Gardolińska), and Turku Philharmonic (Christian Vásquez); and return to the Orchestre National de Belgique (Cristian Macelaru), Russian National Orchestra (Mikhail Pletnev), St. Petersburg Philharmonic (Ion Marin), and Rochester Philharmonic (Ward Stare).
Highlights of the previous two seasons have included concertos with the Münchner Philharmoniker (Valeriy Gergiev), Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Kent Nagano), BBC Philharmonic (Omer Meir Wellber and John Storgårds), Danish National Symphony (Christian Kluxen), Royal Scottish National Orchestra (Karl-Heinz Steffens), San Diego Symphony (Case Scaglione), Yomiuri Nippon Symphony (Sylvain Cambreling), and BBC National Orchestra of Wales (Ainars Rubikis).
Andrei recently gave recitals at Carnegie Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Elbphilharmonie, Zurich Tonhalle, LAC Lugano, and L’Auditori in Barcelona; as well as at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schleswig-Holstein, Verbier, and Martha Argerich Festivals. Forthcoming chamber dates include collaborations with Stephen Hough, Cédric Tiberghien, and Kian Soltani at the Wigmore Hall and Pierre Boulez Saal. Andrei’s debut album on Orchid Classics combined a Brett Dean world premiere with Bach and Kodály, prompting Gramophone to declare him “a cellist of superb skill, musical imagination, and a commitment to music of our time.”
Born in 1994 in Bucharest, Andrei began taking piano lessons at the age of five and received his first cello lesson three years later. He studied under Ani-Marie Paladi at the Iosif Sava Music School in Bucharest and Professor Jens Peter Maintz at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, where he currently resides. Andrei is a scholarship recipient of the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and performs on a Giovanni Battista Rogeri violoncello made by from Brescia in 1671 on loan from the foundation.
