Cellist Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt was a student of David Geringas at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, and he worked with Aldo Parisot at the Juilliard School. Schmidt was a winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition and the International Leonard Rose Cello Competition, and won prizes at the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris, the International Rostropovitch Competition, the Deutsche Musikwettbewerb, the Pacem in Terris International Music Competition, and the International Adam Cello Competition. Schmidt has performed across Europe, Russia, and the United States, and he has appeared with the Orchestre Philharmonique de France, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Sinfonia Varsovia, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. An avid chamber musician, Schmidt has partnered with Christoph Eschenbach, Emanuel Ax, Lang Lang, Gil Shaham, Nikolaj Znaider, Leonidas Kavakos, Isabelle Faust, Boris Faust, Alexander Melnikov, Edgar Meyer, Miriam Fried, and David Shifrin, and plays with Jens Peter Maintz in Cello Duello. Schmidt was also a member of the Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center. He has conducted the ensemble Metamorphosen Berlin, which he co-founded with violinist Indira Koch. Schmidt teaches at the Hochschule für Musik "Franz Liszt" in Weimar, and he is a guest professor at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Schmidt's recordings have been released by Sony Classical, Harmonia Mundi, Naxos, Audite, and Centaur Records.
© Blair Sanderson /TiVo