Walter Küssner

Walter Küssner would really rather have learned the cello, but his brother already played it. Besides that, he had the opportunity of borrowing a viola from his school, and so he decided for the deeper instrument. He received his professional musical training from Jürgen Kussmaul in Düsseldorf, Kim Kashkashian in New York and Michael Tree in St. Louis. In 1987 he became a member of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich. Two years later he moved to the Berliner Philharmoniker, with whom he also takes part in numerous chamber-music formations, for example the Philharmonic String Octet and the Athenaeum Quartet. As visiting professor of viola, Walter Küssner, an enthusiastic chess and skat player, teaches at Berlin’s Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik. Performed at the Festival in 2000 2002 and 2003.