Professor of cello at the Royal Higher Conservatory of Music of Madrid and, since the 2017-18 academic year, adjunct professor of the Aline Foriel-Destezet Cello Chair at the Reina Sofía School of Music, Fernando Arias combines his pedagogical vocation with an intense concert career, both as a soloist and in chamber music.
As a soloist, he has played with orchestras such as the Spanish National Orchestra, the Spanish Radio and Television Orchestra, the Barcelona and National Orchestra of Catalonia, ADDA Alicante, the Royal Seville Symphony Orchestra, the Vallés Symphony Orchestra, the Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim, etc., under the direction of conductors such as Lawrence Foster or Álvaro Albiach and in venues such as the National Auditorium, Palau de la Música de Catalunya, etc. He also regularly gives recitals in the most important halls in Spain and in countries as diverse as Germany, the United States, Russia, Japan, France, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Portugal, Serbia, Tunisia and Mozambique.
Especially interested in chamber music, he shares the stage with artists of the stature of David Kadouch, Antje Weithaas, Anthony Marwood, or the Cosmos and Quiroga quartets, and more regularly with the VibrArt Trio, of which he is a member and founder, together with Miguel Colom and Juan Pérez Floristán.
Among his discographic works, it is worth mentioning the recording for Sony Classical of Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto, the complete Brahms sonatas for cello and piano with pianist Luis del Valle (Columna Música), his album with the Trio VibrArt with works by Schubert and Shostakovich (Solè Recordings) and his latest published CD, “Slavic Soul” with pianist Noelia Rodiles, with works by Dohnanyi, Janacek and Shostakovich (Eudora Records).
His recent and past engagements include performing as a soloist in cello concertos by Vivaldi, Haydn, Beethoven and Martinu (Triple Concertos), Saint Saens, Schumann, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Schostakovich, Ibert, Gulda and Ligeti.
Within his pedagogical facet, Fernando Arias is frequently invited to give master classes in cello and chamber music both in Spain and abroad. From 2012 to 2015 he was part of the teaching team at the Yellow Barn festival (Vermont, United States). He is a collaborator of the Reina Sofía School of Music and in 2019 he won by competitive examination the Cello Chair of the Royal Higher Conservatory of Music of Madrid.
Fernando Arias began his musical studies with Arantza López, and continued them with Ángel Luis Quintana, Michal Dmochowski and Natalia Shakhovskaya at the Reina Sofía School of Music, where he received the title of “Most Outstanding Student” from Her Majesty Queen Sofía. He completed his training with Eberhard Feltz and in the class of Jens Peter Maintz at the Universität der Künste Berlin.