Artistic career

Dear music lovers!
25 years of chamber music (1999-2024)
and no end in sight!

Highest artistic quality“, „deeply touching musicality“, a „performing with soulful breath“ and the „warm, floating sound perceived as romantic“ have been enthusiastically confirmed by the press!

And she has long been in demand as a soloist with a number of renowned ensembles….

Now from the beginning…

The freelance clarinettist Sigrun Felicitas Vortisch first fulfilled her oldest instrumental wish during her final exams in economics in Bamberg (1995/96):

The clarinet. And the clarinet became the discovery of her life.

As a newly graduated economist, she initially found clarinetistic and musical support with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, while she initially remained connected to the university and economics as a research assistant.

In 1997 she is principal clarinettist of the Bamberg University Orchestra and performs in the „Concert Hall of Bamberg Symkphony Orchestra“ on the occasion of the university’s 350th anniversary celebrations. In the same year she is able to work with Prof. Bernhard Kontarsky at the Frankfurt University of Music, who encourages her in her musical endeavours. In 1999, she began studying clarinet and chamber music as a guest student at the Nuremberg University of Music and in the same year won first prize at the music competition of the Otto Friedrich University in Bamberg (Irmler Competition). During this time she received decisive musical encouragement from Prof Alexander Willscher. At the same time, she not only performed as a soloist with the Bamberg University Orchestra, but also developed a wide range of chamber music concert activities. She also teaches clarinet and piano, including as part of the „German Society of highly gifted Children (DGhK)“, Bamberg, and develops a concept for supporting gifted children through music and music lessons.

In January 2003, a near-fatal traffic accident interrupted her career. After a long and difficult rehabilitation, she was only able to resume her concert activities and teaching commitments in Munich in the autumn of 2004. She was able to recruit the pianist and professor of Munich conservatory Erwin Stein as her duo partner, found enthusiastic chamber musicians among the members of the Bavarian State Orchestra and founded the Merlin Trio, and formed the Merlin Ensemble from members of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.

With these partners and ensembles, as well as various string quartets such as the Aglaia Quartet, the Rodin Quartet and the Augsburg String Quartet, she performs regularly in various concert series, including the Munich Town Hall Concerts, the Wasserburg Town Hall Concerts, the Ismaning Castle Concerts, the „Meisterkonzerte Klassik im Ries“, the „Schwaz Summer Serenades“ (Austria), etc. Her concept of reviving rarely performed but enchanting ‘rarities of the Classical and Romantic periods’ has been a great success with audiences and has become one of her trademarks.

In 2011, after returning to her adopted home in Franconia, she initially devoted herself to establishing her ‘Musikzentrum am Weinberg’ in Eckental.

In 2013, she returned to concert life. She presented numerous works for clarinet and piano, both well-known and unknown, in many places with various piano partners, with her chamber music encounter with pianist Paul Badura-Skoda in Vienna becoming a personal and musical highlight.

In addition to her ‘rarities programmes’, she succeeded – with various string quartets and in renowned concert series – in bringing the well-known clarinet quintets of Mozart and Brahms to an enthusiastic audience, whereby she was particularly able to develop a chamber music quintet culture with the ensembles of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra (Bamberg String Quartet), the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra (Hába Quartet) and the Frankfurt Opera (Hindemith Quartet), she has been able to develop a chamber music quintet culture that corresponds to her ideal of chamber music …

In 2019, she can also be heard as a soloist in chamber concerts with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.

During the pandemic years (2020-22), in collaboration with Konrad Klek, Professor of Church Music in Erlangen, she is developing arrangements for clarinet and organ from organ works by the Romantics Josef Rheinberger (1833-1901), Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911) and others, for which she was even awarded a scholarship from the German Music Council in 2022. In the same year, she found two enthusiastic chamber musicians and future duo partners in Zurich pianist Andrea Wiesli and Munich pianist Heiko Stralendorff.

In 2023, she will bring her ‘creations’ to the international music world, performing them at the ‘30th International Festival of Symphonic Organ Art St. Martin’ in Dornbirn, Austria, in the Cathedral of Vaduz, Liechtenstein, and at other renowned organ concert series in Munich, Bad Kissingen and elsewhere.

In 2025, her arrangements will even be heard in Berlin Cathedral, in a duo with cathedral organist Prof. Dr. A. Sieling, fulfilling a dream.

Her interpretation of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, in a chamber music version for clarinet and string quintet, already attracted great attention in 2023 and 2024 at concerts in Munich, Nuremberg and Erlangen, among others – a ‘success story’ that will continue in 2025/26. She will be accompanied by the Mozart Ensemble Bamberg, which she founded in 2024 with members of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra.

In addition, she will also provide many hours of beautiful music in other chamber music formations and at numerous ‘Emporen-Träume’ (gallery dreams), for example as part of the ‘Thuringian Organ Summer‘.