Peter Ruzicka studied law and music in Munich, Hamburg and Berlin, graduating in 1977. Following his period as Artistic Director the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin between 1979 and 1987, he was Director of the Hamburg State Opera from 1988 until 1997. From 2001 until 2006 Ruzicka led the Salzburg Festival. Since 1990 he has been a Professor at the Hamburg Academy of Music Theatre and was the Artistic Director of the Munich Biennale from 1996 till 2014. From 2015 he will serve as intendant of the Salzburg Easter Festival. Ruzicka appears internationally as composer, conductor, festival director and cultural manager.

If his production still stood under the spell of the “father generation” (Henze, Ligeti, Stockhausen) towards the end of the 1960s, since “... fragment ...” (1970) one can designate Mahler, Webern and Celan as the trigonometric points marking his aesthetic course from this point onwards. In front of this background, an oeuvre has developed in which the variety of genres, power of inspiration and sovereign mastery of the composer’s metier are all equally impressive.