Stefan Dohr, widely regarded as an icon of his instrument and one of the world’s foremost horn players, is a celebrated soloist, chamber musician, and Principal Horn of the Berliner Philharmoniker. Praised with having both a “thunderous sound that resounds throughout a valley” (Berliner Zeitung) as well as a breathtakingly “delicate piano that sounds as if from afar” (Badische Zeitung), he captivates audiences on the world’s leading concert stages. Whether performing core repertoire or contemporary works, Dohr’s interpretations are considered influential and authoritative. 

The 2025/26 season begins with a particular highlight: in August 2025, as part of a tour with the Orchestre de Paris, Dohr will premiere Esa-Pekka Salonen’s new Horn Concerto at the Lucerne Festival under the composer’s direction. The tour will also take him to the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and Musikfest Berlin. Further debuts follow throughout the season, including concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Filarmonica della Scala, and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Other engagements bring him to Tampere, Belgrade, Potsdam, and Dresden, where he will present national premieres of Steingrímur Rohloff’s Horn Concerto and the world premiere of a new concerto by Isidora Žebeljan and Veljko Nenadić. In the chamber music field, he returns to the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and will join members of the Berliner Philharmoniker and pianist Seong-Jin Cho for a tour of Korea. 

As a soloist, Dohr has appeared with orchestras such as the Los Angeles and Oslo Philharmonic, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Dresden Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony and the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, among many others. He has collaborated with leading conductors including Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Bernard Haitink, Christian Thielemann, Gustavo Gimeno, Dima Slobodeniouk, Paavo and Neeme Järvi, John Storgårds and Marc Albrecht. At the BBC Proms, he gave the UK premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s Horn Concerto and served as Artist in Residence with the Aalborg Symfoniorkester, shaping the season with symphonic and chamber programmes, the world premiere of Steingrímur Rohloff’s Horn Concerto, and masterclasses. 

Dohr’s artistic curiosity and exceptional technical versatility have inspired many composers to write for him, resulting in important additions to the horn repertoire. These include Moment of Blossoming (2011) by Toshio Hosokawa, premiered with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Sir Simon Rattle; a work by Wolfgang Rihm for Dohr and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (2014); and compositions by Herbert Willi, Jorge E. López, Johannes Wallmann, Dai Bo and Hans Abrahamsen. Most recently, Jörg Widmann dedicated a new Horn Concerto to him, premiered in 2024 by the Berliner Philharmoniker – a joint commission by leading European orchestras. 

Dohr is also a sought-after chamber musician, performing with artists such as Ian Bostridge, Mark Padmore, Maurizio Pollini, Kirill Gerstein, Kolja Blacher, Carolin Widmann and Guy Braunstein. He is a member of the Ensemble Wien-Berlin and the Philharmonic Octet Berlin. 

Stefan Dohr studied in Essen and Cologne and previously held principal horn positions with the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, before joining the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1993. Alongside his concert activities, he gives masterclasses worldwide and has taught at the Sibelius Academy Helsinki and the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin, as well as serving as Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music in London. He currently holds a Guest Professorship at the Norwegian Academy of Music.