Christian Gruber and Peter Maklar, two dedicated and idealistic ambassadors for the classical guitar, have been playing together for 30 years and are well established as one of the pre-eminent ensembles on the international guitar-music scene. Their successful concert career took off when they won First Prize in the International Guitar Duo Competition in 1991 in Montelimar (France).

Numerous concert tours have taken the duo to almost all countries in Europe, as well as to Mexico, Chile, Martinique, Canada, the US, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Christian Gruber and Peter Maklar have been guest performers at such famous venues as the Manhattan School of Music in New York, the Moscow Philharmonic Society’s Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, Gendai Guitar Hall in Tokyo and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw.

Many respected composers, including Dušan Bogdanović, Atanas Ourkouzounov, Wulfin Lieske, Enjott Schneider and Paolo Devecchi have written works for the duo or dedicated pieces to them. Eight albums featuring music ranging from Baroque to modern testify to the duo’s artistic versatility, as do the numerous editions of their arrangements of selected masterpieces published by Doberman-Yppan in Canada.

The duo maintains artistic partnerships with the Japanese singer Tomoko Nakasugi, the oboist Christoph Hartmann (Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra), Bavarian Radio’s announcer Alex Dorow, the violinist Key-Thomas Märkl (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra) and internationally famed guitarists Tilman Hoppstock and Dimitri Illarionov.

Since 2009 Duo Gruber & Maklar has made regular guest appearances with the Amadeus Guitar Duo, for evenings of music for both four guitars or four guitars and organ and for four guitars and orchestra. Since 2008 they have been organisers of Festival Faszination Gitarre in Landsberg am Lech, a course for over 70 participants, with internationally renowned artists and workshops.