Hornist Bruno Schneider is a prominent orchestral player who has also appeared widely as a soloist and chamber musician. He is also an educator and the author of a successful horn textbook.

Schneider was born in 1957 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and grew up in the city of La Chaux-de-Fonds. At age seven, he was given a valveless trumpet and, he told Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News, "I started to blow the hell out of it; obviously my lips were doing a good job from the beginning." At nine, he heard a concert by hornist Hermann Baumann in his hometown and decided on a career as a French horn player. Shortly after, while still only nine years old, he entered the Conservatory of Music in La Chaux-de-Fonds, studying horn with Robert Faller and also pursuing a minor in singing. In 1974 and 1975, he was a member of the World Youth Orchestra. Schneider graduated from the conservatory in 1977 and went on for further study at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold in Germany, graduating with an honor for virtuosity in 1981. By that time, Schneider's career had already begun with an engagement as solo hornist at the Zurich Opera. He won a place in the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1981, and then moved to the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich and later the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. In 2003, he was engaged by Claudio Abbado as solo hornist at the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Schneider's appearances as a horn concerto soloist include those with the Colorado Symphony, the Seoul Philharmonic, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. A champion of contemporary music, he is the dedicatee of works by Norbert Moret, Jost Meier, and Jörg Widmann, among others. Schneider has played chamber music with violinists Gidon Kremer and Vadim Repin, and clarinetist Sabine Meyer.

Schneider has a catalog of some 30 albums, including appearances in chamber works. He has recorded the Mozart horn concertos with the Orchestra da Camera di Padova e del Veneto for the Claves label, and in 2006 he and Eric le Sage issued the album Horn Piano on Avi-Music. In 2020, he was heard with the Quatuor Modigliani, with which he has performed live, on a new Mirare-label recording of Schubert's Octet in F major, D. 803. Schneider is an important educator who has taught at conservatories in Karlsruhe and Freiburg, Germany, and he has given master classes in many countries. He is the author of the textbook Horn Fundamentals. ~ James Manheim, Rovi