CLAUDIO BOHÓRQUEZ has been hailed by conductors and critics alike as one of the most exciting and interesting young cellists to emerge in some time. At an early age he triumphed at such prestigious international competitions as Czech Radio's Concertino Praga (1991), the Youth Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, and the International Rostropovich Competition in Paris (1994). In 1995 he won first prizes at the International Cello Competition in Scheveningen, Holland, and at the Geneva International Music Competition. The following year he was awarded the Prix Davidoff at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. In 2000 Mr. Bohórquez won the first International Casals Competition, and he now plays the maestro's famed Gofriller.

Mr. Bohórquez has appeared with such ensembles as the Deutsches Symponie-Orchester Berlin, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Baden-Baden Philharmonie, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, the Virtuosi di Praga, the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the chamber orchestras of Stuttgart and Zurich. He has played in such prestigious concert halls as the Theatre de Champs Elysées in Paris, Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, the Beethovenhalle in Bonn, and the Gasteig Philharmonie in Munich. Invitations to broadcast performances have come from the Südwestrundfunk in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, as well as from the Bayerisher Rundfunk in Munich. Additional performances have taken him to festivals in Evian, France; St. Petersburg, Russia; Davos, Switzerland, and the German festivals of Schleswig-Hosltein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Rheingau and Kronberg.

In August 2000 Claudio Bohórquez joined Christoph Eschenbach and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a performance of the Shostakovich Cello Concerto at the Ravinia Festival. The Chicago Tribune remarked that Mr. Bohórquez "is to be saluted for his ability to affix a personal interpretive stamp on a concerto his great colleague, Mstislav Rostropovich, virtually owns."

In April 1999 Claudio Bohórquez performed the cello adaptation of Krzysztof Penderecki's Viola Concerto conducted by the composer at the Music-Biennale in Zagreb, Croatia. Other recent projects included performances on the popular German television series "Achtung! Klassik" (with conductor Justus Frantz) in Hamburg, Munich and Zurich; a debut with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin at the Philharmonie in June 2000, and appearances with the Munich Symphony Orchestra and Zürich Chamber Orchestra.

Claudio Bohórquez was born and raised in Germany. He lives in Berlin.