Christian-Friedrich Dallmann was born on 10 January 1955 near the university city of Greifswald, where he received initial instrumental tuition on the french horn and piano. He graduated from Berlin’s Spezialschule für Musik (now the Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Gymnasium) in 1973, and after completing military service in a brass band, began studying french horn at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin in 1975.

 

After winning first prize at the International Instrumental Competition in Markneukirchen, he was given his first teaching assignments by his tutor Prof. Kurt Palm in 1978, initially at the Bach-Gymnasium, and later also as an assistant at the School of Music.

 

In 1978 Christian-Friedrich Dallmann was appointed principal horn of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra (now the Konzerthaus Orchestra Berlin), a position he held for 20 years. Solo and chamber music performances with the Berlin Octet and concerts with his orchestra saw him play at many of the world’s most famous concert halls.

 

He was for many years a member of the Bachakademie Stuttgart. His deep and lasting interest in the practice of historical horn performance began in 1985, and he was a longstanding member of the Academy for Ancient Music Berlin. This period also saw him take a growing interest in conducting, underpinned by a two-year course of study in the subject at the School of Music.

 

As a horn teacher and rehearsal director, he has worked with Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, the German National Youth Orchestra, the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra Caracas, and the Tchaikovsky Youth Orchestra Yekaterinburg.

 

In 1996 Christian-Friedrich Dallmann was appointed honorary professor at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. He subsequently served as a juror at major international horn competitions.

 

In 2000 he was appointed full professor of horn at the University of Music Detmold. Berlin University of the Arts, where he leads a large international horn class, made him a full professor in 2004. His students are winners of international music competitions; nine of them are presently professors at European and Asian colleges of music.

 

Christian-Friedrich Dallmann is also a visiting professor at the Musashino Academia Musicae Tokyo and the Tchaikovsky Music College in Yekaterinburg. He has given courses in China, Hungary, Poland, Switzerland, and, now for the second time, in Singapore.

 

In recent years Christian-Friedrich Dallmann has expanded his conducting activities. He works regularly with Concerto Brandenburg, an orchestra from Berlin whose members perform on historical instruments. Conducting engagements have taken him to the USA, Venezuela, Spain, and Russia.