Artistic credibility and interpretative authenticity, tonal temperament, and precise, nuanced phrasing characterize his playing: Peter Bruns is counted among the leading German cellists.
Solo concerts and recitals have taken Peter Bruns to the most renowned music centers, including the Berlin Philharmonic, New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Tokyo and Hong Kong, the Semperoper Dresden, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, as well as 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 major orchestras, including touring with the Saxon State Orchestra 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, Michael Jurowski, and Bruno Weil. His engagement with the musical language of various styles and epochs has led to close collaborations with renowned ensembles such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. As the artistic director of the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig, he regularly performs as soloist and conductor with this ensemble.
In recent seasons, Peter Bruns has performed in many German music centers, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Cologne Philharmonic, the Margravial Opera House Bayreuth, the Choriner Musiksommer, and the MDR Musiksommer, as well as internationally at the Musikverein Vienna, Tokyo, Auckland, Beijing, Bangkok, Seoul, and Israel. His repertoire includes works by Haydn and Dvořák, as well as concertos by Beethoven (Triple Concerto), Boccherini, Schumann, Dutilleux, Gulda, Volkmann, and Offenbach’s “Concerto militaire.” Upcoming highlights of this season include invitations to perform at the Philharmonie Essen, Philharmonie Cologne, Hamburg, and Bremen, among others, with Reinhold Friedrich and Daniel Ottensamer.
Born in Berlin, he studied in his hometown with Professor Peter Vogler at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler.” 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 since 2005 has held the same position at the Leipzig University of Music.
Peter Bruns has recorded a number of award-winning CDs, including complete recordings of the Brahms sonatas, the Bach suites, works by Gabriel Fauré, Ernest Bloch, Charles Koechlin, Robert Schumann, Robert Volkmann, Charles-Marie Widor, and Louis Vierne. He also recorded the A minor concerto by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (Cannes Classical Award “Best CD of the Year”), the complete works of Antonín 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 Saxon Wind Philharmonic on the CD “Images and Mirrors” (GENUIN classics), he recently released with the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig the CD “Cosmopolitan Mendelssohn” featuring works by Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Volkmann, Donizetti, and Gade on the Klanglogo label. In 2020, “Beethoven – Most Complete! 1–3” was released, featuring duo recordings with pianist Annegret Kuttner, including not only the common sonatas but also rarely or never before recorded rarities, such as Sonata Op. 64 (!) and the cello arrangement by Beethoven’s student Carl Czerny, which was performed during Beethoven’s lifetime.
Peter Bruns plays on an instrument by Carlo Tononi, Venice 1730, which once belonged to the legendary Spanish cellist Pablo Casals.
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