Age: 24
“There is a seemingly endless amount of exquisite musical works out there waiting to be explored. It is a great feeling when one has accomplished to add yet another piece to their repertoire—they all have their different personalities.”
Lorenz Karls was born in Vienna into an Austrian-Swedish family. He began playing the violin at the age of four and is currently a student at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg.
Some of his highlights as a soloist include his appearance at the Mozartwoche Salzburg in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum Foundation, followed by concerts with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Lithuanian National Philharmonic Orchestra, Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, WDR Funkhausorchester, Camerata Bern, Odense Symfonieorkester, Kremerata Baltica, Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, and Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano.
Lorenz has won numerous prizes at national and international competitions, among them seven top prizes from member competitions of the World Federation of Music Competitions. These include Mozart Competitions in Salzburg, Austria and Zhuhai, China, as well as the Arthur Grumiaux International Violin Competition in Belgium. He won second prizes from the Karol Lipinski International Violin Competition and the Classic Violin Olympus International Competition; as well as third prizes from the Michael Hill International Violin Competition, Seoul International Music Competition, and Khachaturian International Violin Competition, among others. Lorenz has been reinvited by the Concours musical international de Montréal, after reaching the Semifinal round in 2023.
Lorenz plays a very special violin manufactured in 2025, whose wood from New Zealand is thought to be 30,000 years old: “This wood was buried deep underground since the end of the last Ice Age. The trees have survived the centuries underground, sealed in a chemically-balanced environment that preserved the timber in almost perfect condition. A violin like this is an absolute rarity, and there are only few such instruments existing in the world.”
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