Christopher Berensen

Christopher Berensen was born in Sydney, Australia. At the age of 15, he won the Musica Viva Australia competition for baroque composition. In this context, his own Concerto Grosso was recorded by the British ensemble Florilegium. Since then he has worked freelance with the repertoire of the early modern period and plays on historical keyboard instruments.

With the help of a scholarship, he studied at the University of Sydney, then at the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Academy of Music and Theater in Leipzig and was already employed as a soloist, accompanist, chamber music partner and orchestral musician during his student years.

Although he avoids competitions as a matter of principle, he nevertheless won 2nd prize and the audience prize at the Biagio Marini Chamber Music Competition in 2014 with the Tempora Felicia ensemble. Together with his colleague Leopold Nicolaus, he won the WDR Special Prize at the H.I.F. Biber Competition in 2015, where he was also named best basso continuo player of the competition.

Over the years he has performed and recorded with high quality ensembles such as the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Tallis Scholars, the Leipzignr Baroque Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Saxon Baroque Orchestra, the New Bach Collegium Musicum, the Merseburg Court Music, the Weimar Baroque, the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig and the ensemble for baroque dance accompaniment Les Matelots.

In 2012 he founded the Rosentaler Barock Ensemble and in 2014 led the ensemble in the contemporary premiere of an unknown English opera, “The Honour of Arbaces”, by Lady Mary Stuart, Countess of Bute.