After completing his music studies in London, post-graduate studies at the Hamburg music conservatory and two years as Musical Assistant at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg’s principal theatre, Christopher Alder joined Deutsche Grammophon as a tape editor in 1980.

Trained by the company as a recording engineer, he became a Recording Producer in 1986. Three years later, Alder was also appointed Executive Producer and for the next two decades was unique at Deutsche Grammophon in combining both those roles. Since 2004 he has produced the recordings of the label’s best-selling artist, soprano Anna Netrebko.

In the course of his career at Deutsche Grammophon, Alder has produced several hundred recordings, including all of Maurizio Pollini’s and virtually all of Claudio Abbado’s. He has also made countless solo albums with Martha Argerich, Kathleen Battle, José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, the Emerson String Quartet, Yevgeny Kissin, Magdalena Kozená, Yundi Li, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Anna Netrebko, Maria João Pires, Thomas Quasthoff, Mstislav Rostropovich and Bryn Terfel, and worked with other international stars such as Bruno Ganz, Sting and Roberto Benigni.

Alder has also produced numerous orchestral and opera recordings with Myung-Whun Chung, James Levine, Paul McCreesh, Seiji Ozawa and André Previn, as well as Claudio Abbado, working with all the world’s great orchestras and leading singers. In 2006 two of his recordings won two Grammy awards, and his production of Mozart’s Zauberflöte (Magic Flute) conducted by Abbado received the coveted Gramophone award as “Opera Recording of the Year”.

For German, French and international TV Alder has been the audio producer of several New Year’s Eve concerts; the Berlin Philharmonic’s annual Europe Concerts in Lisbon, Athens, Budapest and Palermo, with Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, Mariss Jansons, Sir Simon Rattle; concerts from the Lucerne Festival; and concerts from Berlin’s Waldbühne, the most recent one featuring Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazón and Plácido Domingo.

In February 2007 Christopher won another Grammy for his recording of the Chopin Nocturnes with Maurizio Pollini, making this his sixth Grammy Award in total.