The German musician refused to let being born without arms stop him from becoming a horn virtuoso. As he prepares for the Royal Albert Hall concerts, he explains why the real disability is imagining that there are limits
When Felix Klieser was four he made a decision: he was going to learn the french horn. “Nobody knows where I’d even heard about this instrument,” he laughs. “There is nobody musical in my family. We never went to concerts. My parents didn’t even know what a french horn looked like!”
Göttingen, the small city in the middle of Germany where Klieser grew up, boasts just one music school. A teacher there, conscious of the fact that the horn is a very physical instrument, requiring impressive lung capacity and strong lips, gently suggested some more appropriate first instruments. Would he like to make some sounds on a piano, perhaps, or bang a drum? “I remember becoming a little bit angry,” says Klieser, “because the idea was not to make music. The idea was to play the horn!”
