This is one of the best CD recordings of the year – perhaps of the decade […]. Here we encounter the closest we have witnessed […] to a new Casals.”

(Early Music Review on the CD recording of J.S. Bach’s 6 Suites for Solo Cello)

“Peter Bruns does what he does best on his Tononi cello from 1730: he declaims, just like Pablo Casals, who also used to own the instrument. Peter Bruns once confirmed the closeness to Casals, saying: ‘I also try to speak with the instrument.’”

(Maja Ellmenreich in Deutschlandradio Cologne)

The cellist Peter Bruns has established an excellent reputation in the international music world as one of Germany’s leading cellists. Born in Berlin, he studied with Professor Peter Vogler at Berlin’s “Hanns Eisler” Academy of Music.

Peter Bruns has performed as soloist and chamber musician in renowned concert halls throughout all continents, including the Berliner Philharmonie, the Carnegie Hall in New York, the Wigmore Hall in London, concert halls in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Seoul, in the Semperoper Dresden, in the Leipziger Gewandhaus as well as at the most important festivals including the Kuhmo, Bergen, Berlin and Dresden Music Festivals, the Budapest Spring Festival, the Seoul Spring Festival and Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus festival.

The artist has also performed as soloist with many major orchestras and has toured with the Staatskapelle Dresden as well as with the RAI, MDR and Berlin symphony orchestras. He has collaborated with conductors such as Giuseppe Sinopoli, Eliahu Inbal, Gianandrea Noseda, Christoph Prick, Marc Albrecht and Bruno Weil.

His fascination with the ancient language of music and the instrumentation of the various stylistic periods has led to close collaboration with renowned orchestras in this field, in particular with the “Akademie für Alte Musik” Berlin, with whom Peter Bruns has played for CD productions, concerts and festivals (Bergen, Brügge, Berlin, Regensburg, Köthen).

From 1993-2000, Peter Bruns was Artistic Director of the Moritzburg Festival. From 1998 to 2005, he was Professor for Cello at the Dresden School of Music and, since 2005, has held the same position at the Academy of Music in Leipzig.

Master classes led Peter Bruns to many German cities as well as to London, New York, France, Sweden and Australia.

Developing also a career as conductor, Peter Bruns is the Artistic Director of the Mendelssohn Kammerorchester Leipzig since 2014, and performs regularly in its own concert series in the Gewandhaus Leipzig as well as on tours.

Peter Bruns has recorded a series of award winning CDs including Brahms’s Cello Sonatas, Bach’s Six Suites for Cello Solo, the works of Gabriel Fauré, Ernest Bloch, Charles Koechlin and Robert Schumann, a recording of a Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach concert which won the Cannes Classical Award for “Best CD of the Year”, Antonin Dvorak’s works for cello and orchestra with the Staatskapelle Dresden and his highly acclaimed recordings of Haydn’s, Schumann’s and Volkmann’s Cello Concertos with the Mendelssohn Kammerorchester Leipzig.

Peter Bruns plays on a cello from Carlo Tononi, Venice 1730, which was once owned by Pablo Casals.

Born in Yerevan in 1996 into a family of musicians, Feliks Harutyunyan began the violin at the age of five. Since 2022 he has held a permanent position in the first violins of the Vienna Volksoper Orchestra.

After the Tchaikovsky Music School and the Komitas State Conservatory in Yerevan, where he studied with Alexander Kosemyan, he joined Dominika Falger’s class at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, earning his bachelor’s degree in 2019 and his master’s degree in 2021, both with distinction; he then continued with her at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna.

As a soloist he has appeared with the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Armenian National Chamber Orchestra – with which he made his debut in 2018 in Mozart’s A major Concerto – and the Symphony Orchestra of the University of Graz, with which he played Bartók’s Second Concerto in 2021. Guest concertmaster of the Armenian National Chamber Orchestra, he also plays with the Wiener Symphoniker and the Tonkünstler-Orchester.

First-prize winner at the Váša Příhoda International Violin Competition and the Malta International Music Competition 2018, finalist of the Ysaÿe and Grażyna Bacewicz competitions in 2019 and laureate of the Khachaturian Competition in 2020, he founded the string ensemble Grazer Solisten. A scholarship holder of the Académie musicale de Villecroze and the Geneva International String Academy, he has worked with Renaud Capuçon, Tedi Papavrami, Sergey Ostrovsky and Mihaela Martin.

Born in 1997, Clara Mesplé began the violin at the age of six and in 2006 entered the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional in Montpellier, in the classes of Anne Temperville and then Anne-Marie Regnault. At twelve she won first prize in her category at the Vatelot-Rampal Competition.

Admitted in 2014 to the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Lyon in Marianne Piketty’s class, she earned her master’s degree unanimously with distinction, then continued her studies in Berlin with Peter Rainer at the Universität der Künste. She has also been taught by Krzysztof Węgrzyn, Michael Frischenschlager and Renaud Capuçon.

A member of the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra in 2013 and 2014, then of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and the Seiji Ozawa International Academy Switzerland in 2018, she plays with Les Forces Majeures, Ensemble Appassionato, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the Orchestre Eroica Berlin and the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine.

In chamber music she co-founded the Quatuor Confluence, unanimous first prize with the jury’s congratulations at the Philharmonie de Paris competition in 2016, and later the Quatuor Arlequin, third prize at the Anton Rubinstein International Chamber Music Competition in 2019. Winner of the Talents Classiques jury prize in 2019, she plays a violin by François Caussin dated 1885.

Born in Hong Kong in 1999, Kwan Hon Gordon Lau started on the violin and switched to the viola in 2014 for its fuller, warmer sound. After the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln with Werner Dickel, he studied from 2017 to 2022 at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin with Tabea Zimmermann and German Tcakulov, including an Erasmus semester in Geneva with Máté Szűcs. Since 2023 he has been studying for a master’s degree with Tabea Zimmermann at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts.

A chamber musician trained by Eberhard Feltz and the Artemis Quartet, he has played with Sayaka Shoji, Daniel Hope, Rainer Schmidt and Peter Bruns, and has been guest principal viola of the Kammerakademie Potsdam and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Orchestra. He has performed at the Seiji Ozawa Academy, the Zermatt Music Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and the Moritzburg Festival, and in 2020 appeared with his brother on Daniel Hope’s ARTE programme “Hope@Home”.

A scholarship holder of Villa Musica Rhineland-Palatinate since the 2019/20 season, he received the “Star of Villa Musica 2023” award. A former member of the Hong Kong Children’s Choir, he is also a keen singer. He plays a 2013 viola by Patrick Robin, on loan from the Hochschule Hanns Eisler.

Born in 1998, Lisanne Schick took classical dance and piano lessons from the age of four and began the viola at six with Tina Strinning at the Lausanne Conservatoire. There her first quartet, the ensemble Krysalid, won three first prizes with distinction at the Swiss Youth Music Competition, and she herself won two first prizes as a soloist and a SUISA prize for the performance of one of her own compositions.

A pre-HEM student of Noémie Bialobroda from 2014 to 2017, she joined Jean Sulem’s class at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris in September 2017, and in 2021 spent an Erasmus semester with Pauline Sachse at the Musikhochschule Lübeck. She has played with Bachs Erben, the German National Youth Orchestra, the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra and the Quatuor Métamorphoses, under conductors including Simon Rattle and Daniel Harding.

She has taken part in the European Chamber Music Academy, the Geneva International String Academy and the Académie internationale de musique de Flaine. A regular guest of the Festival 4 Saisons in Lausanne, she was commissioned by the festival to write a sonata for viola and piano for the final concert of its 2021 edition. Supported by the Fondation Irène Dénéréaz, she plays a viola by Philippe Mahu.

Born in 2001, Héloïse Houzé earned her master’s degree in viola at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris in Jean Sulem’s class in 2022, with the jury’s congratulations, and has continued there in the postgraduate cycle. In 2026 she completed a residency at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel with Miguel da Silva and the Elite Programme of the École normale de musique de Paris in Gérard Caussé’s class.

Winner of the Grand Prix Ravel in 2022, she was awarded second prize and the audience prize at the Oskar Nedbal International Competition in Prague in 2023. She is regularly invited as principal viola by European orchestras and appears at many festivals.

In February 2026 she founded the ensemble Talismans, which champions the viola’s concertante repertoire and where she develops conducting as well as directing from the instrument. She plays a viola by Paul Noulet on loan from the Talents & Violon’celles foundation.

Lena Schulz began her studies at the Vorarlberg State Conservatory with Mathias Johansen and in 2020 joined Conradin Brotbek’s class at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts, where she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees with distinction. In 2023/24 she studied as an Erasmus scholar with Jakob Koranyi at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.

She then pursued further studies in leading orchestral positions with Francis Gouton in Mannheim and with Frans Helmerson at the Stauffer Academy. Distinguished at the International David Popper Competition and winner of the soloist competition of the Vorarlberg Conservatory, she received the Soroptimist scholarship of the Stuttgart University in 2025.

She has worked in masterclasses with Gary Hoffman, Kian Soltani, Alban Gerhardt, Peter Bruns and Frans Helmerson. Since January 2026 she has been an academy member of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern.

Hannah Ruschepaul was born on 23.01.1997 and grew up in the Hanover region. She received her first cello lessons at the age of six at the Isernhagen music school. From 2010 to 2013, Hannah was an early student at the Institut für Frühförderung musikalisch Hochbegabter (IFF) at the HMTM Hanover with main subject lessons from Prof. Aydintan. At the age of 16, she moved to Prof. Stolzenburg at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar's Center for the Gifted and Talented and completed her Abitur at the Schloss Belvedere music high school there. Hannah now lives in Hamburg and studies at the HfMT Hamburg in Prof. Sebastian Klinger's class.

From 2007 to 2016, Hannah took part in the Jugend Musiziert competition in various formations and won several national prizes. She was a winner of the Lions Music Prize of Lower Saxony and won first prize in the Novissima Award of the Syker Vorwerk, Center for Contemporary Music, as well as the Elise Meyer Competition. Hannah is a scholarship holder of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Yehudi Menuhin organization Live Music Now.

Hannah made her solo debut at the age of 13 with Joseph Haydn's C major Cello Concerto accompanied by the Elizabeth Concort Chamber Orchestra. This was followed by numerous other solo performances, including Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations.

As a member of various ensembles, such as the German National Youth Orchestra, she has given numerous concerts in Germany, EU countries, China and Israel. These include multiple performances in the Berlin Philharmonie and the Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem.