Born in Basel in 1965, Bernard Schirrer was awarded a First Prize for horn in 1989 at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris, where he studied under André Cazalet. 

He attended Professor Hermann Baumann’s summer courses and became a member of the Claude Debussy Wind Quintet, with whom he won two First Prizes at the International Competitions in Martigny, Switzerland, and San Sebastián, Spain.

In 1990, Semyon Bychkov appointed him to the Orchestre de Paris, and the quality of his playing as a bass horn player established him as the unanimously recognised specialist in this discipline.