Born in England to Viennese parents, Walter Reiter graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in London and continued his studies in Israel with Rami Shevelov, a former Galamian assistant who later took over Galamian’s chair at The Julliard School, and in Germany with Sandor Vegh and Michael Gaiser. Having studied towards a Master's Degree in Violin Pedagogy at the Jerusalem Academy of Music (with Prof. Felix Andreiewsky, former assistant of Prof. Yankelewitch in Moscow) he completed his studies with Prof. Piotr Bondarenko, who had been David Oistrakh’s assistant in Moscow. After working for three years with Yehudi Menuhin’s ‘Menuhin Festival Orchestra,’ as well as with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and several contemporary music groups in Paris, he devoted himself for six years to the intensive teaching of talented children at the Rubin Conservatory of Music in Jerusalem. Many of his students there went on to become professional violinists and violists working as orchestral players and as chamber musicians. His love for the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought him to the study of 'authentic' performance practice on period instruments, and this has been his passion ever since. Walter Reiter is internationally recognised as a leading Baroque violinist, teacher, leader and conductor. He is Professor of Baroque Violin and Viola in the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. For some twenty years he has been teaching and directing projects in Havana: his work in Cuba is now sponsored by The Mozarteum Trust. Walter has made countless recordings with orchestras in Europe and the UK. A muchtraveled recitalist, he has recorded the Recreations of Leclair for Addes, France and Sonatas by Mondonville for Meridian, a CD that was awarded the ‘Choc’ label by the French CD magazine Diapason. In 1999 he founded Cordaria, whose highly acclaimed solo CDs on the Signum label are of Vivaldi Violin Sonatas Op 2, the Biber Mystery Sonatas, and "Un alma innamorata", a collection of cantatas for voice, violin obbligato and continuo. He has led and directed many baroque orchestras over the years both in the UK and abroad. He led The Orchestra of The Sixteen for ten years and was a Principal of The English Concert for nearly thirty years; with them and with the English Concert Chamber Group he toured and recorded extensively, frequently appearing as a soloist. Recent solo appearances include the complete Sonatas with harpsichord by Bach in the Bach House in Eisenach and at the Jerusalem Bach Festival.

Walter has worked with Symphony Orchestras as a conductor and director in programmes of Baroque Music on modern instruments. The most recent projects of this kind have been with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, The Orchestra of the Lyceum Mozartiana in Havana and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, where he conducted the complete Bach Orchestral Suites in a series of three concerts. In 2018 he conducted Cosi fan Tutte in a staged production in Rotterdam and in 2019 he directed a three-day workshop with members of The Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra in Tromsø, Norway. Future projects include courses in Norway, Latvia and Spain.

Walter Reiter is the author of ‘The Baroque Violin & Viola – a Fifty Lesson Course’ to be published later in 2020 by Oxford University Press. His Baroque Violin Etude book ‘Gradus ad Parnassum’ was published by International Music Publishers and a four-volume pedagogic ‘Baroque Violin Anthology’ is being published by Schott. He has also written a novel, ‘Healing by Deceit, The Story of Alan Palladino,’ published in 2015.