Christian Poltéra
Born in Zurich, Christian Poltera studied with Nancy Chumachenco, Boris Pergamenschikow and Heinrich Schiff. As a soloist he has given concerts with numerous leading orchestras including the Tonhalle, Zurich, the Salzburg Camerata, the NDR Radio Philharmonic, the Berlin, Basle and Lucerne Symphony, the Moscow Radio Symphony, the BBC orchestras, the Northern Sinfonia, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, RAI, Turin, and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome, working with many distinguished conductors such as Fedoseyev, Fischer, Holliger, Schiff, Slatkin, Venzago, Viotti, Jordan, Chailly and Zinman.

Chamber music projects have brought him together with Isabelle Faust, Leonidas Kavakos, Gidon Kremer, Janine Jansen, Julius Drake, Till Fellner, Lars Vogt, Leif Ove Andsnes, Christian Tetzlaff, Mitsuko Uchida and the Artemis, Auryn, Guarneri and Zehetmair String Quartets.

He appears regularly at festivals such as Salzburg, Berlin, Vienna, Lucerne, Zurich, Davos, Risør, Kuhmo, Lockenhaus and Perth and at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg. In the UK, Christian has appeared in, amongst others, the Bath, Cambridge and the City of London Festivals, in a Britten Memorial Concert in Aldeburgh, and at halls including St Luke’s, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, the Sage, Gateshead and Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. In 2007 he played the Dvorak concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in the closing concert of the Prague Autumn Festival.

Recordings include concertos by Dvorák, Toch, Martin,Schoeck and Honegger, as well as chamber music.

In 2004 he received a Borletti-Buitoni Award and for the 2006/2007 season, he was appointed, in duo with the pianist Polina Leschenko, a European Concert Halls Organisation 'Rising Star'. As such, they played in many of the major European concert halls and at Carnegie Hall, New York. Christian has played with the Zehetmair and Auryn Quartets; his future plans include chamber music with artists including Martin Fröst and as a member of the string trio with Frank Peter Zimmermann and Antoine Tamestit, appearances at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, recitals with Kathryn Stott, and concerto and chamber music concerts throughout Europe and in the USA