Sophia Reuter

Sophia Reuter was born in Dresden and comes from a family with a long musical tradition; her father is the conductor Rolf Reuter, and her grandfather, Fritz Reuter, was a composer.

She received her first violin lessons at the age of five from Prof. Klaus Hertel at the ‘Felox-Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’ Hochschule für Musik in Leipzig. She was later taught by Prof. Peter Tietze in Berlin. At the age of 10, she was the youngest participant to win a prize at the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, and in 1988 she won first prize at the Music Competition in Weimar. In 1989, she had the opportunity to audition in East Berlin for Yehudi Menuhin, who invited her to study at his academy in Switzerland.

From 1989 to 1993, she studied violin with Yehudi Menuhin and Alberto Lysy, and viola with Johannes Eskær at the International Menuhin Music Academy in Gstaad. She subsequently attended masterclasses with renowned figures such as Ruggiero Ricci, Pierre Amoyal, Igor Oistrach, Corrado Romano and many others. Since then, she has performed as a soloist in some of the world’s most important musical centres. Her numerous tours have taken her to France, Italy, Spain, the UK, the USA, South America, South-East Asia and elsewhere. She has performed as a violinist and violist at various chamber music festivals, including in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Argentina and the Far East. This gave her the opportunity to perform with figures such as Yehudi Menuhin, Nikita Magaloff, Igor Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, Frank Peter Zimmermann and Jean-Pierre Rampal.

She remained a lecturer in viola and chamber music at the Menuhin Academy until the end of 2000.

After returning to Germany in 2001, she spent a further two years, from 2001 to 2003, studying in Prof. Alfred Lipka’s class at the Hochschule für Musik ‘Hanns Eisler’ in Berlin to perfect her viola playing. As a soloist, she has performed with various symphony orchestras in Germany, across Europe and in South America. In Germany, she often performed under the baton of her father, Prof. Rolf Reuter. She has made several CD recordings as a soloist with the Camerata Lysy alongside Yehudi Menuhin and Alberto Lysy, and later as a chamber musician, for example for EMS, Dinemec, Naxos, Claves, SWR and Bayerischer Rundfunk. Sophia Reuter has taught as a lecturer at the International Menuhin Music Academy (IMMA, Switzerland), at the Mozarteum Summer Academy in Salzburg and at the Dortmund Orchestra Centre, as well as giving masterclasses at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (Netherlands) and numerous courses in Bangkok (Thailand) and South America. She has coached the violas at the Barenboim-Said Academy for an orchestral project, and most recently taught and performed at the Festival Internacional de Música SESC Pelotas (RS, Brazil) in 2024 and 2025. She has a particular interest in chamber music, ranging from the Baroque to contemporary repertoire.