Christoph Igelbrink

Born in Düsseldorf

Member since 1989-04-01

Awards:

Winner of several prizes at national and international competitions

»Anyone aspiring to a career as an orchestral musician quite naturally wants to play in the best – I think that’s what has happened to me here. Routine is the enemy of music making. In order to avoid it, every musician needs to pursue his profession with seriousness, exactness and emotion, but also with commitment and love for the music. To interpret the great works of the leading composers, whether in the chamber-music or orchestral literature, to get closer to the essential core of a piece of music while also allowing a large audience to share in the experience – this for me is a constantly fulfilling source of artistic satisfaction.«

Christoph Igelbrink was already playing the piano at the age of three and began learning the cello when he was eleven in order to fill out a family string quartet. Inspired by rapid successes in the »Jugend musiziert« competitions, by the fun he had playing in diverse youth orchestras and from reading biographies of great cellists, he soon realized he wanted to become a professional cellist. At 16 he entered Düsseldorf’s Robert Schumann Hochschule as a pupil of Wolfgang Mehlhorn, later studying at the Hamburg Musikhochschule and attending master classes with Antonio Janigro and Paul Tortelier. After completing his studies he was engaged in 1986 by the Hamburg Philharmonic (Philharmonische Staatsorchester). Since 1989 he has been a member of not only the Berliner Philharmoniker but the »12 Cellists« as well, and he also plays in the Athenaeum Quartet, the Philharmonic Piano Trio of Berlin and the Philharmonic Octet. His free time is devoted to his wife and three daughters, to the house and garden, and cycling. A tense football match can often distract him from such domestic hobbies as reading or playing the piano.