© Marian Lenhard

Christoph Eß

Principal horn

Today, Christoph Eß is considered one of the leading horn players of his generation.He began his training with Peter Hoefs at the Tübingen School of Music. He completed his higher studies under Prof. Christian Lampert and Wolfgang Wipfler at the Music Universities of Basel and Stuttgart, where he passed his diploma with distinction in 2008.

Christoph Eß was prize-winner in the ARD Competition in Munich and the Richard Strauss Competition, among others, and in 2007, he won the world-renowned Prague Spring Competition, with seven special prizes. As a soloist he performed with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony and Zurich Tonhalle Orchestras.

He also plays chamber music, as instigator of german hornsound, the highly successful horn quartet founded in 2010, as well as with partners such as Christian Zacharias, Andreas Scholl, the Fauré Quartet, the Quatuor Ébène, Boris Kusnezow and Viviane Hagner. In 2005/2006 he was employed as third horn of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2007 he was solo horn in the Essen Philharmonic. Since the 2007/2008 season he has had a permanent post as solo horn of the Bamberg Symphony.

In the winter of 2017/2018 he accepted an invitation to be Professor of Horn at the Lübeck Academy of Music. That same season, Christoph Eß was also Artist in Residence at the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic, and with the Essen Folkwang Chamber Orchestra he recorded all of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s horn concertos for the Genuin Classics label.