Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt – conductor (Germany)

During his studies with Aldo Parisot at the Juilliard School in New York and with David Geringas at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt won the 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”. Sony Classical released his CDs with cello concertos by Prokofiev, Schumann under direction of Gabriel Feltz. 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). Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt performs not only as a cellist, but also as a conductor. He’s been a guest conductor with Württembergischen Philharmonie Reutlingen, der Nordwestdeutschen Philharmonie Herford, Chamber Orchestra of Deutschen Oper Berlin, “INSO-Lviv” Symphony Orchestra.
10 year ago together with his wife, a violinist Indira Koc, he founded a chamber orchestra «Metamorphosen Berlin» where he is a chief conductor. Sony Classical has already released two CDs of the orchestra featuring works by J. Suk, A. Dvorak and P. Tchaikovsky. Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt is a Professor at the Kronberg Academy, the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar and Berlin University of the Arts.