Prof. Lothar Strauß

Lothar Strauss is one of the leading German concert masters. Born as the son of a composer and a singer, he already began playing the violin at the age of five at Berlin’s Special Music School. Owing to his great talent, he was admitted to the master class of Prof. W. Scholz at the Hanns Eisler Music Academy in Berlin at the age of 14, and in the following years he won several awards at international competitions. The Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin even elected the 22-year-old as its first concert master when he was still enrolled as a student.

He was invited as a soloist and guest concert master to Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, Essen, Bamberg, i.e. to some of the most important ensembles of the German orchestral landscape. The same happened in Venezuela, Spain, Singapore, Japan and Switzerland. The tours with the Staatskapelle, solo concerts, chamber music, music festivals and membership duties in juries brought him to Europe, the Middle East, North, Central and South America, as well as to Asia.

Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, Sir Simon Rattle, Placido Domingo, Martha Argerich, David Oistrakh, Django Reinhardt, Oscar Petersen and Richard Strauss inspired his artistic career decisively.

It was with great curiosity that he devoted himself to projects involving big bands, accompanied a Led Zeppelin production as a concert master, played in recordings of film music and played with virtuosos of Baroque music such as Giovanni Antonini and Ton Koopman.

Already in the second year of study did his teacher Prof. Werner Scholz entrust him with pedagogical tasks, even deploying him as a temporary assistant. Through his later teaching activities at the academies in Berlin and Leipzig as well as at the orchestra academy of the Staatskapelle Berlin, Lothar Strauss has paved the way for a considerable number of violinists in the music profession.

In 2015 he was appointed Professor of Violin at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.