Reinhold Friedrich, born in Weingarten/Baden, has been at home on the world’s most prestigious stages since his celebrated success at the ARD Competition 1986. His diverse repertoire and his passionate engagement with both early and contemporary music make him one of the most outstanding trumpeters of our time. As early as 1982, he impressed audiences with Luciano Berio’s “Sequenza X” at the Berlin Festival, followed by his brilliant debut at the Vienna Musikverein in 1994 with Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto on a historical keyed trumpet. In 2003, Claudio Abbado appointed him principal trumpet of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, where he is also artistic director of the brass ensemble.
Reinhold Friedrich understands music as an inseparable whole. Historical performances with ensembles such as Capriccio Basel and the Vienna Academy are given equal weight alongside world premieres and first performances of contemporary works. His collaborations with composers such as Wolfgang Rihm, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and Herbert Willi are among the cornerstones of his work. His award-winning recording of Zimmermann’s “Nobody Knows the Trouble I See” and Herbert Willi’s concerto “Eirene” are milestones in his discography. Recently, his recordings “Time Travels – from Siddhartha, Marco Polo to Bach” and “The Art of Trumpet” with works by Enjott Schneider were nominated for the ICMA (International Classical Music Awards) in 2024 and 2025.
Highlights of 2024 included performances of Weinberg’s Trumpet Concerto in B-flat major, Op. 94, with the NHK Orchestra under the direction of Andrés Orozco-Estrada in Tokyo and Tel Aviv. In the summer of 2025, Reinhold Friedrich will participate in a staged
performance of Stravinsky’s “Histoire du soldat” at the Salzburg Festival, alongside Isabelle Faust (violin) and Dominique Horwitz (narrator), in a co-production with the Salzburg Marionette Theatre.
