Biography

Christian Gruber and Peter Maklar, two dedicated and idealistic ambassadors for the classical guitar, have been playing together for more than 30 years and have long represented one of the pre-eminent ensembles on the international guitar-music scene. The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote after one of their concerts: „This is how one imagines benchmark performances.“ Their successful concert career took off when Gruber and Maklar won first prize in the International Guitar Duos Competition in Montélimar/France in 1991.
Numerous concert tours have taken the Duo to almost all countries in Europe, as well as to Mexico, Chile, Martinique, Canada, USA, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Christian Gruber and Peter Maklar have been guest performers as such famous venues as the Manhattan School of Music in New York, the Moscow Philharmonic Society‘s Tschaikovsky Concert Hall, Gendai Guitar Hall in Tokyo and Amsterdam‘s Concertgebouw.
Many respected composers, including Dusan Bogdanovic, Enjott Schneider, Atanas Ourkouzounov and Paolo Devecchi have written works for the Duo or dedicated pieces to them.
Eight CD releases featuring music ranging from Baroque to modern testify to the Duo‘s artistic versatility, as do the numerous editions of their arrangements of special masterpieces by Doberman-Yppan in Canada.
The Duo maintains artistic partnerships with other artists such as the Japanese singer Tomoko Nakasugi, the violinist Key-Thomas Märkl (Bavarian Radio Symphonic Orchestra), the actor Stefan Wilkening, the internationally famed guitarists Tilman Hoppstock and Dimitri Illarionov and the Amadeus Guitar Duo.
„Their technique is spectacular, their musical understanding cannot be overstated, their ensemble with each other is outstanding and, as they proved in a magnificent evening of music on December 7th at the Manhattan School of Music a part of the Augustine Guitar Series, they deserve to be recognized as one of the finest guitar duos in the world.“ (Guitar Review, USA)