Dirk likes to tinker around with programs. And if there is no suitable literature, it will be arranged. “Mostly” to the delight of everyone involved 😉 Contemporary music in our programs is very important to him.
For more than 30 years, Dirk Altmann has been a principal solo clarinet with the SWR Symphonie Orchestra in Stuttgart. In addition, he is very active as a soloist, chamber musician, arranger and teacher. In recent years his concert activities have often taken him to Japan. In addition to concerts in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, he produced Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet at the End of Time” for NHK television in 2019 with Mako Okamoto, Kei Shirai and Gen Yokosaka. Likewise in 2019 his recording of Mozart clarinet concerto KV 622 and the clarinet quintet KV 581, with the Ludwig Chamber Players and Masato Suzuki (fortepiano, conductor) has been released by the TACET label . In 2016 he produced PARIS, an album with the Japanese pianist and professor Mako Okamoto. Further CDs with works by Charles Koechlin, Robert Schumann and Paul Hindemith have been released with the labels Hänssler classic and TACET. As a soloist Altmann recorded the Première Rhapsody by Claude Debussy with Heinz Holliger and RSO Stuttgart for SWRmusic.
As a chamber musician he plays with the Ludwig Chamber Players (LCP), the STUTTGART WINDS, the newears.ensemble and in a duo with pianist Mako Okamoto.
An ensemble version of the “Visions fugitives” by S. Prokofiev (TACET:Prokofiev Chamber music), which he did for the Ludwig Chamber Players, was nominated for the International Classical Music Award (ICMA) 2017.
As a soloist, he was a guest at international festivals, In Ferrara, Schwetzingen, Salzburg or the Rheingau Music Festival, with Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Neville Marriner, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Thomas Hengelbrock, Peter Eötvös, Heinz Holliger and Daniel Harding as conductors.
In recent years, Dirk Altmann has repeatedly been invited to master classes in China, Taiwan and Japan. Since 2010 he has been cooperating with the Japanese woodwind instrument manufacturer JOSEF Woodwind Manufacture (Okinawa) and the clariner supplier LIGAPHONE Paris.
Favorite pieces from the LCP repertoire: Gideon Klein PARTITA arranged for septet, Schubert octet, Johann Strauss Wildfeuer polka
