Image: Stefan Dohr. Photo © Simon Pauly

Gillian Wills talks to horn player Stefan Dohr at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music.

French horn player Stefan Dohr has been dubbed 'the king of his instrument'. After he made his debut at The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in 2019, the artistic director Marc Neikrug described him as 'perhaps the greatest horn player of our time'. Dohr is Principal Horn of the Berlin Philharmonic and a highly sought after soloist and chamber musician.

This remarkable musician is making a big splash at North Queensland's Australian Festival of Chamber Music (AFCM) which began on 25 July and runs until 2 August 2025. His intelligent, knowledgeable, virtuosic playing and stunning capacity to explore a vast spectrum of colour from the merest whisper to the voluminous bellow of a lion has enabled the curation and exceptional delivery of wind repertoire never heard before in tropical Townsville, a stone's throw from the Barrier Reef.

As the AFCM's writer-in-residence, I spoke to him about the challenges of the instrument, his career aspirations, his love of Mahler and contemporary music and how he keeps his playing fresh.

Read the interview on Classical Music Daily, here.