The internationally acclaimed performer, teacher, clinician and adjudicator, Dutch-born Hans Nickel (b. 1958), recently retired from his position as solo tuba with the German WDR Symphony Orchestra, a position he held from 1986. His retirement was described in the press as ‘a legend retires’.
As a performer, Nickel has been invited to premiere works by respected contemporary composers including Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jan Bedřich, Edward Gregson, Jan Van der Roost, Jack Adler-McKean and Maurice Hamers. In 2024, he gave the German premiere of Reflections on the Mississippi for Tuba and Orchestra by Michael Daugherty in a livestream performance with the WDR Symphony Orchestra. He won the highly esteemed ‘European Soloist of the Year’ prize twice at the EBBC, in Rotterdam and Cardiff.
His many solo CD recordings include canTUBAllada (considered ‘essential listening’ by the Sunday Times), Tuba Obsessions, In Freundschaft, Aus dem Leopardi-Zyklus and Bernstein’s Mippy. During the Corona pandemic, Nickel turned more towards social media and easy-listening music. Thus, the Hans Nickel plays… series was created by the WDR for its YouTube channel, featuring popular classics re-arranged for tuba and chamber orchestra. The first of the eight recordings in this series reached over one million people, earning him the comment, ‘The Tuba becomes a digital star …’ All of these recordings can be viewed on YouTube.
As a popular teacher, Hans Nickel taught at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne, the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf and the Conservatorium in Maastricht. He also taught low brass to the German Bundeswehr in its pre-university programme for many years. Nickel regularly teaches worldwide and can now enjoy seeing his former students holding positions in some of the world’s top orchestras, including the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Brussels Philharmonic, the Radio Orchestra Athens, Opera Marseille, the Seoul Symphony Orchestra and Xi’an Symphony Orchestra. Some have become dedicated teachers themselves and teach at renowned institutes, while others have become successful conductors — Joost Smeets and David Daubenfeld, for example — whilst others, such as Thomas Leleu, enjoy a worldwide reputation as performers.
Nickel enjoys working as a chamber musician and has performed with the Belgian Brass Soloists, the Asko Ensemble, Ensemble Modern and many others. In 2008, he formed Brass Consort Köln with his orchestral brass colleagues. They went on to create the project Das Blech Kommt, which was adopted by the WDR as an educational project throughout NRW. The BCK have been popular musicians in the WDR Maus series and produced a YouTube film in 2025, First Aid with the Mouse, with which they went on an educational tour.
2025 was a busy year, with participation in ThaiTEC 2025, LizBrass ’25 (Leiria Brass Festival), the 2025 Wuhan Low Brass Festival and, in Valencia, the VII Tuba/Lombardi Event. There, he premiered a new arrangement of Philip Sparke’s Concerto for Tuba with brass ensemble. He went on to perform the same piece in a Fanfare arrangement in Gelderland. He also premiered an arrangement of Michael Forbes’ Alpine Concerto for Fanfare, interestingly at the final conductor’s exam of one of his former tuba students, Xavier Kuipers, now a conductor in the Netherlands. Nickel also took the opportunity to perform with a multitude of symphony orchestras, including NDR Hamburg, the Brussels Philharmonic and his former orchestra, WDR.
2026 has been an equally busy and exciting year thus far. He was invited for the first time to join the jury at the prestigious Internationaler Instrumentalwettbewerb Markneukirchen (Markneukirchen International Instrumental Competition) in its 61st edition. In the summer, he was a soloist at the World Music Contest in Kerkrade (NL), performing Chameleon by Maurice Hamers, a work with which he had previously appeared at the European Brass Band Championships in Cardiff. The piece is now also performed in a Fanfare arrangement by the composer himself with Fanfare St. Caecilia, Schinnen. In December, he will premiere a work by Julio Domingo, Scars, for solo tuba and wind orchestra in Aachen, Germany. Again, he has guested with many symphony orchestras.
In other words, ‘retirement’ has merely meant a slight change in direction …
Professor Hans Nickel — proud to perform on instruments ‘Made by ADAMS.’
