Introducing: Rainer Küchl

On Saturday, June 6th, the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra welcomes
Rainer Küchl, highly distinguished violinist, music professor and former concertmaster at the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. The evening features an exciting programme including Sonatas from Vivaldi and Beethoven and works from Dvořák, Saint-Saëns and Strauss arranged for violin and piano.

In celebration of this acclaimed musician’s 75th birthday, and ahead of his performance at the Holywell Music Room, we look back over Küchl’s incredible life.

Born in the August of 1950, Rainer Küchl spent his earliest years in the small Lower Austria city of Waidhofen an der Ybbs, a historic town along the river, nestled between forested hills.

Küchl first picked up the violin aged 11, then, from 14, he spent 6 years studying under Professor Franz Samohyl, a fellow Austrian, and a violinist of high regard.

In 1971 at just 20 years old, Küchl was appointed concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, a position formerly held by his tutor Samohyl. He held these positions for an admirable 45 years, retiring just shy of a decade ago in 2016.

An illustrious career followed, working with world-renowned conductors including the likes of Karl Böhm, Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, Riccardo Muti and Simon Rattle.

In 1973, two years after his appointment to concertmaster, and a year after achieving the same position at the Imperial Court Chapel at the Hofburg in Vienna, Küchl was awarded the Mozart Interpretation Prize for solo performance.
That year also saw the founding of the Küchl Quartet, an award-winning outfit, which went on to have its own chamber music cycle at the Brahmssaal of the Wiener Musikverein.

Since his retirement from the Vienna Philharmonic, Küchl has continued as an active soloist and concertmaster, both at home in Austria and abroad. Particularly notable are his guest concertmaster appearances with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo.

Küchl has also appeared as guest concertmaster for the OPO. If you attended our night with Maxim Vengerov or our performance Mozart’s Requiem, he was sat in the leader’s chair.

Be sure to join us on June 6th, as Rainer Küchl plays alongside the OPO once again.

All photographs in this article were taken by Nicholas Posner.

The upcoming performance in Europe’s oldest custom built concert hall is part of Küchl’s 75th birthday celebrations. The evening features an exciting programme including Sonatas from Vivaldi and Beethoven and works from Dvořák, Saint-Saëns and Strauss arranged for violin and piano.

This concert is held in association with English Heritage Concerts.

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