Ludwig Güttler

Ludwig Güttler (born 13 June 1943) is an internationally known German virtuoso on the Baroque trumpet, the piccolo trumpet and the corno da caccia. As a conductor, he founded several ensembles including the chamber orchestra Virtuosi Saxoniae. His name is sometimes written in English as Ludwig Guttler.

He received a number of awards including Discovery of the Year in 1983, and Frankfurt’s Musikpreis for extraordinary achievements in 1989. He was a founding member of the Rheingau Musik Festival and has appeared regularly since the first season in 1988.

As head of the society of the Dresdner Frauenkirche, Ludwig Güttler promoted the reconstruction of this famous Baroque church, which was destroyed during World War II and was rebuilt in 1994–2004. In recognition of these contributions, Queen Elizabeth II appointed him Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in November 2007. Güttler was born in 1943 in Sosa, in the Ore Mountain region of Saxony. He studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik – Mendelssohn-Akademie in Leipzig with Armin Männel. From 1965 to 1969 he played in the orchestra of the Handel Festival in Halle and from 1969 to 1980 with the Dresden Philharmonic. He has been teaching the trumpet at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden until 1990, and at the annual International Music Seminar in Weimar from 1980 to 1990.Since the mid-1970s, Güttler has been mainly active as a soloist and later as a conductor, at home and abroad, devoted mainly to the trumpet literature of the 18th century, especially the high-pitched piccolo trumpet. He was also involved in the development of a modern brass instrument to play parts designated for the historic corno da caccia. The instrument was made by Friedbert Syhre in Leipzig.

Güttler is also musical director of the festival "Sandstein und Musik" (Sandstone and Music) in Saxon Switzerland, founded in 1983 and of the festival Musikwoche Hitzacker in Hitzacker. Güttler is a member of the Sächsische Akademie der Künste (Saxon Academy of Arts).