If you could play another instrument what would it be? Violin.
Which are your Desert Island Discs? J.S. Bach’s B minor Mass. And a book for the desert island: Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers.
The first piece of music you fell in love with: W.A. Mozart’s Flute-Harp Concerto K. 299, the second movement – when I was six.
Can you tell us something about your instrument?? I play a wooden flute made by Bernhard Hammig.
When and where was your first concert with the MCO? Ferrara, April of 1998, with Daniel Harding.
BIOGRAPHY Chiara Tonelli has been the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s solo flutist since the group was founded and is also a member of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA under Claudio Abbado. She regularly plays principle flute with the Camerata Salzburg, as well as with Abbado’s Orchestra Mozart and with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
For ten years Chiara was the first solo flutist of the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence (principle conductor, Zubin Mehta) and prior to that of the Teatro Regio in Turin. She has additionally performed with the Orchestra della Toscana, the RAI Orchestra Milan, the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Berlin Philharmonic.
As a soloist she has appeared with numerous ensembles, including the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Haydn Orchestra, Orchestra dei Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, String Academy Bolzano, Orchestra della Toscana, Chamber Orchestra of Bergamo e Brescia, Salzburger Chamber Philharmonic, Bucharest Symphony Orchestra, and the Presidential Symphony Orchestra Ankara. Chiara has performed on invitation at such chamber music festivals as the Festival Spannungen in Heimbach, Storioni Festival in Eindhoven, and the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival in Virginia.
Chiara Tonelli has taught her own class since 2005 at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole in Florence.
Following her graduation from conservatory in her hometown of Bolzano, she studied with Irena Grafenauer at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and appeared for four years with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra as solo flutist.
Together with her husband, Philipp von Steinaecker, Chiara runs the chamber music festival Kammermusikfest auf Schloss Prösels and founded the group Musica Saeculorum, performing regularly with that orchestra on original instruments.
