Curriculum vitae:
Emotional and thoughtful passion are often used adjectives to describe Thomas-Michael Auner’s playing.
The young cellist, born 1990 into a musical family in Vienna, already began learning the cello and piano with his parents at a very young age.
He wishes to express pure musical thoughts, while keeping highly artistic standards, and is just as convincing when playing as a soloist with orchestra or in his Beethoven-Duo with pianist Maximilian Flieder.
Thomas has appeared as a soloist with many orchestras such as the Orchestre Royal du Chambre de Wallonie, the Slovak Radio Orchestra, the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, the Sinfonietta Baden, the RTSH Orchestra Tirana, the Sinfoniette dell’Arte, the Orchestra of the MUK Vienna, the Orchestra of the TU Vienna, or the Ensemble Neue Streicher Vienna.
Thomas took part in numerous festivals, such as the Rome Chambermusic Festival, the Podium Festival Mödling, the Wörthersee Classics Festival and the ISA Summer festival.
He currently plays on a beautiful Giovanni Grancino Cello (Milano 1604) “ex Piatti/Dunlop” on generous loan from the Austrian National Bank (OENB).
He is a winner and finalist in numerous international Cello competitions, such as the Liezen Cello Competition, the Mendelsohn-Bartholdy Competition Berlin, the Richard-Strauss-Competition Munich, the Cello Competition Antonio Janigro in Porec, Croatia, the Gradus ad Parnassum competition in Austria and was semifinalist in the Queen Elisabeth competition in Brussels in 2017. He was awarded a prize of the Mozartgemeinde Vienna and performed together with pianist Maximilian Flieder in the Wiener Musikverein, the Brucknerhaus Linz, the Pianosalon Christophori Berlin, among others.
In 2015 his first CD has appeared with the Austrian label Gramola, in 2023 his latest CD “217” was published with SoloMusica in Munich.
“Highly emotional…” (FonoForum magazine), “an album hard to resist” (AAG), “…with so much thoughtful passion” (Orchestergraben), are a few voices by the press.
Thomas began learning the Cello at the age of five with his father Diethard Auner, before studying with Prof. Stefan Kropfitsch in Vienna and with Gustav Rivinius in Saarbrücken (Germany). He then continued to study with the legendary cellist Natalia Gutman at the Vienna Conservatory (MUK), from where he graduated with distinction in spring 2018. Thomas wrote his master thesis on the development of the cello as a solo instrument in early 18th century Vienna.
He had a contract at the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and is currently cello section leader in the
Bruckner Orchester Linz.