Horn player Stefan Dohr is second to none when it comes to his instrument: as a celebrated soloist, chamber musician, and principal hornist of the Berliner Philharmoniker, he is an icon on the international horn scene. Blessed with a "thunderous sound that echoes across the valley" (Berliner Zeitung) as well as a breathtaking "delicate piano that sounds as if from afar" (Badische Zeitung), he thrills audiences on all the major concert stages worldwide. Whether performing well-known works from the horn repertoire or contemporary compositions, Stefan Dohr's interpretations are considered authoritative.
The 2025/26 season began with a special highlight: as part of a tour with the Orchestre de Paris, he presented the world premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen's Horn Concerto under the conductor's baton at the Lucerne Festival in August 2025, with further performances at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Musikfest Berlin. The season will see him make his debut with renowned orchestras such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Filarmonica della Scala, and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Further performances will take him to Tampere, Belgrade, Potsdam, and Dresden, among other places, where he will perform the national premiere of Steingrímur Rohloff's Horn Concerto and present the world premiere of Isidora Zebeljan/Veljko Nenadić's Horn Concerto. He will also be a guest at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, among other chamber music events, and will tour Korea at the end of the season with musicians from the Berlin Philharmonic and pianist Seong-Jin Cho.
Stefan Dohr performs worldwide as a soloist, having appeared with the Los Angeles and Oslo Philharmonic Orchestras, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Dresdner Philharmonie, the BBC Scottish Symphony, and the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, to name but a few. He has worked with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Bernard Haitink, Christian Thielemann, Gustavo Gimeno, Dima Slobodeniouk, Paavo and Neeme Järvi, John Storgårds, and Marc Albrecht. Stefan Dohr appeared at the BBC Proms with the British premiere of Hans Abrahamsen's Horn Concerto and, as Artist-in-Residence, played a key role in shaping a season of the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, where he designed symphonic programs and chamber music concerts, premiered Steingrímur Rohloff's Horn Concerto, and gave master classes.
Stefan Dohr's artistic curiosity and exceptional technical flexibility have inspired numerous composers to dedicate new works to him. This has resulted in significant contributions to the horn repertoire in recent years: Toshio Hosokawa's concerto "Moment of Blossoming" (2011), premiered with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle, Wolfgang Rihm's work for him and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (2014), as well as compositions by Herbert Willi, Jorge E. López, Johannes Wallmann, Dai Bo, and Hans Abrahamsen. Most recently, Jörg Widmann dedicated his Horn Concerto to him, which premiered in Berlin in 2024 with the Berliner Philharmoniker – a joint commission by several leading European orchestras.
Stefan Dohr is also in demand internationally as a chamber musician. He has performed with artists such as Ian Bostridge, Mark Padmore, Maurizio Pollini, Kirill Gerstein, Kolja Blacher, Carolin Widmann, and Guy Braunstein, and is a member of the Wien-Berlin Ensemble and the Philharmonisches Oktett Berlin.
Stefan Dohr studied in Essen and Cologne and was initially principal hornist of the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin before taking up this position with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1993. In addition to his concert activities, he gives master classes worldwide, taught at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and the "Hanns Eisler" Academy of Music in Berlin and was a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music in London. He is currently a visiting professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music.