Leonhard Waltersdorfer
Percussionist Leonhard Waltersdorfer was born in Graz in 1993 and currently resides in Vienna (Austria), where he is a member of the Stage Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera.
He took his first percussion lessons at the age of five. After attending the Studio Percussion School in Graz, he studied Percussion at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna and graduated with honors in 2019. In the meantime, he was a student at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.
He gained extensive orchestra experience nationally at the Vienna Philharmonic, Volksoper Wien, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tonkünstler Orchestra of Lower Austria and internationally at the Bochumer Symphoniker, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the musicAeterna orchestra. In addition to his freelance work, he had temporary contracts at the Graz Opera from 2017 to 2018. He has been a percussionist in the Stage Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera since 2018.
In 2019 he made his debut at the Wiener Konzerthaus as part of the ensemble Quetsch ‘n’ Vibes, which combines Alpine folk music with classical percussion instruments and influences from around the world. The ensemble’s second CD Kaleidoskop was released in 2022. He also plays with his brother Niki in Duo Waltersdorfer and frequently in the ensemble phil Blech Wien.
As a composer and arranger, Leonhard Waltersdorfer mainly focuses on mallet instruments (primarily vibraphone), yet he also prepares arrangements for chamber music with mixed instrumentation. In 2021 his arrangement of the Mozart opera Le Nozze di Figaro for children’s orchestra was performed in Beijing and Shanghai.
He won first place in two international percussion competitions in Italy (Italy Percussion Competition and International Percussion Competition). Over the years, he received seventeen first place awards at the Austrian young musicians’ competition Prima la Musica.