Biography

Oscar Benjamin Hollmer was born in Germany in 2010 into a family of musicians. He received cello lessons from Susanne Bohn-Schultze, among others. Since 2020, he has been a junior student in the class of Prof. Christoph Richter at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and with Prof. Bonian Tian. 

He has actively participated in master classes given by Prof. Troels Svane, Prof. Tanja Tetzlaff, Friedrich Thiele and Prof. Gabriel Schwabe. He is a scholarship holder of the Music Academy of Liechtenstein and takes part in the intensive weeks and activities of the academy. 

Oscar is a prizewinner in various competitions. In addition to the 1^st prize in the “6^th Konrad Adenauer Competition”, he also won the 1^st prize (best rating) in the “21^st Beethoven Bonnensis Youth Competition” and the special prize for the best Beethoven interpretation (also best rating). In the last six years, he has won a number of 1^st prizes, each with the highest score, at “Jugend musiziert”, most recently in 2023 at the national level in Zwickau and in 2024 in a piano duo with his sister Frieda Magdalene. In addition, his string trio was awarded the “Youth Chamber Music Promotion Prize NRW” and the “WESPE Special Prize for the Best Interpretation of a Work of Classical Modernism”. Oscar received a special prize from the German Music Life Foundation. He is the 1^st prize winner with an award at the 2022 “Hamburg Instrumental Competition” in the Violoncello Solo category. In 2023, together with his sister in a string duo, he won the “Jugend-Kammermusikförderpreis des Landes NRW” and the “Jugendkulturpreis Wuppertal”. In 2024 he won the sponsorship prize at the “39. Bundeswettbewerb Jugend komponiert”. 

In 2022, Oscar made his debut with the 6^th Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra by Luigi Boccherini and the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen under the direction of Johannes Klumpp. He has performed at the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, the Beethovenhaus Bonn, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Libermé Castle in Belgium, the Nordkirchen Castle, the Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal, the Historisches Rathaus Köln, the Historisches Rathaus Münster and the music academies in Essen, Cologne, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Detmold, among others. In 2024, he performed as a soloist with the WDR Funkhausorchester under the direction of Bar Avni (La Maestra 2024) in the Neue Aula of the Folkwang University of the Arts, where he played Astor Piazzolla's Grand Tango. The concert was broadcast on WDR 3 in the program TonArt and broadcast live on WDR 4. Also in 2024, he played Joseph Haydn's 1^st Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in C major with the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen under the direction of Johannes Klumpp. 

Oscar has been a scholarship holder of the Deutschen Stiftung Musikleben since 2021 and this year's scholarship holder of the Langenberg Festival and the 31st Summer Music Academy Hundisburg. In 2023, he was accepted into a three-year scholarship from the Chamber Music Center NRW.