Bernhard Endres was born in 1962 in Saarbrücken, Germany .
He began to study in his native town at the University and the University of Music of the Saarland, studying schoolmusic with musicology and classical philology, piano-pedagogy, artist-diploma piano and orchestral conducting. Artistically he concentrated on piano major with Prof. Alexander Sellier, on chambermusic with Prof. Claus Kanngiesser and on orchestral conducting major with GMD Prof. Hans Drewanz.
As a fellow of the government of the Saarland, the Rotary-Foundation, the DAAD and the IU-School of Music Bloomington, he continued his piano- and chambermusic-studies in Paris, Munich and Bloomington (USA) in the classes of Serge Petitgirard, James Tocco, Gerhard Oppitz, Michel Béroff and György Sebök, which deeply influenced and promoted his further development. In these years he also actively participated in the international masterclasses of Leon Fleisher, György Sandor and Vlado Perlemuter, thus having obtained a rich musical education in contact with the great masters of the piano.
Very early he won first prices in the Walter-Gieseking-Competition in Saarbrücken and in the international competition for the superior artist diploma at the Ecole Normale in Paris , and had success as fourth finalist in the International Piano Competition W.A.Mozart in Sarrebourg (France).
After early teaching positions at music schools and after having been assistance- conductor at the Lutheran Choir Community of the Saar under Prof.Dr.Loskant, he began in January 1989 as an AI at IU-School of Music in Bloomington (USA), and in October 1989 as piano-teacher at the University of Music of the Saarland to teach piano at universities. Already in 1991 he won the position as piano-teacher at the Meistersinger-Conservatory in Nuremberg – now University of Music – as one of the youngest university teachers in Germany to have an own piano class. With these 35 years of teaching at university-level he is meanwhile one of the most experienced teachers in Germany, who instructed innumerable students in all study programs from all over the world. Now these former students pass on their knowledge to their own pupils.
Like all his teachers, Bernhard Endres represents a certain ethics in music, which sets a higher value on the search for sense than on the striving for a superficial perfection without musical contents. In times of increasing glamour and showmanship, he focuses in his teaching on the human being at the instrument, struggling for a personal and profound interpretation. He preaches listening and tries to develop the awareness of his students.
In his long teaching experience once in a while some of his students have been successful at competitions.
Beyond that Endres has been performing for decades with great joy as soloist and chambermusician and even as an orchestrapianist at the radio station of the Saar-Radio. He participated there for more than 20 years in concerts and productions mainly in the field of contemporary music.
Through his concerts, radio-broadcasts and CD’s Endres has earned international reputation as a highly cultivated pianist with an enourmous sense for sound and colours, whose playing showed structural clarity and poetry. He mastered a wide repertory that reached out in our time and encompassed works of composers like Reger, Stockhausen, Bernstein or Scriabin as well. He has always had a particular passion for chambermusic. Together with the oboist Prof.Menzel he has published a 7-CD-anthology, which is exemplary in its artistical and pedagogical conception and which received a very positive international press echo. The recordings are still being broadcasted.
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