Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt

Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt was born in Freiburg (Germany) in 1971. 

During his studies with Aldo Parisot at the Juilliard School in New York and with David Geringas at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, he won First Prizes at the German National Music Competition in Bonn, at the 1st International Adam Cello Competition in New Zealand, and at the International Music Competitions in Bayreuth and Markneukirchen, Germany. He was awarded the “Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris” at the International Rostropovitch Competition in Paris where the international jury was headed by Mstislav Rostropovitch (also the prize for contemporary music ). He is also a prize winner at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and at the International Leonard Rose Cello Competition in the USA.

Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt has performed in Europe, Russia, Asia and the USA as soloist with such prestigious orchestras as the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the NDR Radiophilharmonie, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in Paris, the Sinfonia Varsovia, the Slovenian RTV Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Houston and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras as well as the Prague Philharmonia under the batons of Charles Dutoit, Marek Janowski, Yutaka Sado, Gerd Albrecht, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jiri Belohlavek, Vassili Sinaiski, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Andrey Boreyko, Hugh Wolff, Michael Sanderling, Gabriel Feltz, Fabrice Bollon and Markus Poschner.

Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt has also performed in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, the Philharmonie am Gasteig and the Herkulessaal in Munich, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Theatre du Champs Elysee, the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, the Wigmore Hall London, the Carnegie Hall and the Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Rudolfinum Prague as well as in the Suntory Hall in Tokyo.

He devotes himself to chamber music and has already performed together with such renowned artists as Lang Lang, Christoph Eschenbach, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, Nicolaj Znaider, Leonidas Kavakos, Kyoko Takezawa, Miriam Fried, Edgar Meyer and David Shifrin. From 2000-2002 he was a member of the Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center in New York and together with Jens Peter Maintz he forms the cello duo “Cello Duello”.

His first CD for Sony Classical French Impressions was released in autumn 2001. The second in 2004 – all cello concertos by Sergei Prokofiev followed by the cello concertos by Schumann and Elgar in April 09 (Sony Classical). For Capriccio he recorded Bloch’s “Voice in the Wilderness” with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. In 2013 he won the “Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik” and the Diapason d’Or for his recording of Carl Maria von Weber’s piano quartet (together with Isabelle Faust, Boris Faust and Alexander Melnikov). 

For the past few years Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt has increasingly focused his activities on conducting, a devotion towards what was already part of his studies at the Juilliard School in New York. He has received invitations to the Dortmunder Philharmoniker, the Göttinger Symphonieorchester and the Hofer Symphoniker, the Kammerorchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin, the Staatskapelle St. Petersburg, the INSO Lviv, the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, the Württembergische Philharmonie and the Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester. Guest conductorships have taken him to Switzerland, Poland and Spain.

As principal conductor of the chamber orchestra Metamorphosen Berlin which he also founded, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt has led the ensemble in numerous concerts in German, Spain and Switzerland as well as in concerts at the Elbphilharmonie and the Konzerthaus Berlin, where the orchestra has also found its artistic home with its own concert series. In addition to his performances as a conductor, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt also regularly appears in a dual capacity as soloist and conductor simultaneously. 

Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt plays on a cello made by Matteo Goffriller which previously belonged to Hugo Becker. He teaches as a professor at the Hochschule für Musik “Franz Liszt” Weimar, the Berlin University of the Arts and, since 2017, at Kronberg Academy.