Masterclass Violoncello
Prof. Peter BrunsCourse repertoire: freely selectable
Master class, individual instruction
Technique and interpretation
Participant concert
Course start: Monday, April 20, 2026, 3:00 PM
Course end: Saturday, April 25, 2026, after breakfast
€980.00 course fee/active for professionals
€930.00 course fee/active for students
€680.00 course fee for passive participation
class
His playing is characterised by artistic credibility and interpretative authenticity, tonal temperament and precise, nuanced intonation: Peter Bruns is one of Germany’s leading cellists.
Solo concerts and recitals have taken Peter Bruns to the most renowned music centres, including the Berlin Philharmonie, New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Tokyo and Hong Kong, the Semperoper Dresden, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus and major festivals such as Kuhmo and Bergen, the Berlin and Dresden Music Festivals, the Budapest Spring Festival and Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus Festival.
Peter Bruns is a soloist with many important orchestras, including the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the RAI Symphony Orchestra, the MDR Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. He has worked with conductors such as Giuseppe Sinopoli, Herbert Blomstedt, Colin Davis, Eliahu Inbal, Thierry Fischer, Christoph Prick, Marc Albrecht, Michail Jurowski and Bruno Weil. His exploration of the musical language of different styles and eras has led to close collaboration with renowned ensembles such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. As artistic director of the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig, he regularly performs as a soloist and conductor with this orchestra.
In recent seasons, Peter Bruns has performed in many German music centres, including the Berlin Philharmonie, Cologne Philharmonie, Bayreuth Margravial Opera House, Chorin and MDR Musiksommer, as well as internationally at the Musikverein Vienna, in Tokyo, Auckland, Beijing, Bangkok, Seoul and Israel. In addition to Haydn and Dvořák’s works, he has also performed concertos by Beethoven (Triple Concerto), Boccherini, Schumann, Dutilleux, Gulda, Volkmann and Offenbach’s ‘Concerto militaire’. Upcoming highlights of this season include concert invitations to the Philharmonie Essen, the Philharmonie Köln, Hamburg and Bremen with Reinhold Friedrich and Daniel Ottensamer, among others.
Born in Berlin, he studied in his home city with Professor Peter Vogler at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music. From 1993 to 2000 he was one of the artistic directors of the Moritzburg Festival, from 1998 to 2005 he held a professorship for cello at the Dresden University of Music and has held the same position at the Leipzig University of Music since 2005.
Peter Bruns has recorded a number of award-winning CDs, including complete recordings of the Brahms sonatas, the Bach suites, works by G. Fauré, E. Bloch, C. Koechlin, R. Schumann, R. Volkmann, C.M. Widor and L. Vierne, as well as recordings of the Concerto in A minor by C.P.E. Bach (Cannes Classical Award ‘Best CD of the Year’), the complete works of A. Dvořák for cello and orchestra with the Staatskapelle Dresden and the highly acclaimed recordings of the cello concertos by Haydn, Schumann and Volkmann with the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig. Following the recording of Friedrich Gulda’s Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra with the Sächsische Bläserphilharmonie, the CD ‘Cosmopolitan Mendelssohn’ with works by Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Volkmann, Donizetti and Gade was recently released with the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig. 2020 saw the release of ‘Beethoven – Most Complete! 1-3’, with duo recordings together with Annegret Kuttner at the piano, which contain the usual sonatas as well as rarities that are rarely or never recorded.
Peter Bruns plays on an instrument by Carlo Tononi, Venice 1730, which was owned by the legendary Spanish cellist Pablo Casals.