Daniel Müller-Schott
Daniel Müller-Schott is one of the most sought-after cellists in the world and can be heard on all the great international concert stages. For many years he has been enchanting audiences as an ambassador for classical music in the 21st century. The New York Times refers to his “intensive expressiveness” and describes him as a “fearless player with technique to burn “.
Daniel Müller-Schott guests with international leading orchestras; in the US with the orchestras in New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Los Angeles; in Europe the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Bayrisches Staatsorchester and Münchner Philharmoniker, the Radio Orchestras from Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Leipzig and Hamburg, Copenhagen and Paris, Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, the London Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, the Spanish National Orchestra as well as in Australia with the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and in Asia with Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.
Daniel Müller-Schott has appeared worldwide in concert with such renowned conductors as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Thomas Dausgaard, Christoph Eschenbach, Iván Fischer, Alan Gilbert, Gustavo Gimeno, Bernard Haitink, Neeme Järvi, Karina Canellakis, Dmitrij Kitajenko, Susanna Mälkki, Andris Nelsons, Gianandrea Noseda, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Kirill Petrenko, Michael Sanderling and Krzysztof Urbański. Many years of musical collaboration linked him with Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel, Yakov Kreizberg and Sir André Previn.
In addition to performances of the great cello concertos, Daniel Müller-Schott has a special interest in discovering unknown works and extending the cello repertoire, e.g. with his own transcriptions and through cooperation with contemporary composers. Sir André Previn and Peter Ruzicka have dedicated cello concertos to him, which were premiered under the direction of the composers with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. This past spring Daniel Müller-Schott played with Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lambert Orkis the first performance „Ghost Trio“ by Sebastian Currier in New York’s Carnegie Hall. Both the US-born Sebastian Currier as well as Olli Mustonen have composed a cello sonata for Daniel Müller-Schott.
Highlights of the season 2019/20 include concerts in Europe with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko, with the Czech Philharmonic and Jacub Hrůša. Additionally, Müller-Schott has re-invitations with Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and Simone Young, with Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Fabio Luisi and in the US with Seattle Symphony Orchestra and Marc Albrecht. In Asia Daniel Müller-Schott will perform with Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and Alejo Perez as well as with NCPA Orchestra China and Manfred Honeck and with New Japan Philharmonic and Cristian Macelaru. Daniel Müller-Schott will celebrate the Beethoven jubilee year together with „Anne-Sophie Mutter and Friends“ with an extended orchestra and chamber Music tour in Europe, Asia and in the US. Beside the works by Ludwig van Beethoven, a new string quartet by Jörg Widmann will be premiered in San Francisco. At the festivals Schubertiade, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, MDR Musiksommer and Schleswig-Holstein Musikfestival, the cellist will be heard as a soloist as well as in chamber music. For the first time Daniel Müller-Schott will appear at the Rostropovich Festival in Moscow with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana and Michel Tabachnik.
International music festivals regularly invite Daniel Müller-Schott including the London Proms, the Schubertiade, Schleswig-Holstein, Rheingau, Schwetzingen, the Heidelberg Spring Festival and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the cellist has appeared first time as Artistic Director in 2019; and in the USA, festivals in Tanglewood, Ravinia, Bravo! Vail and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. In his chamber music concerts, Daniel Müller-Schott collaborates inter alia with Nicholas Angelich, Kit Armstrong, Renaud Capuçon, Xavier de Maistre, Julia Fischer, Igor Levit, Sabine Meyer, Nils Mönkemeyer, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Francesco Piemontesi, Lauma and Baiba Skride and Simon Trpčeski.
Daniel Müller-Schott has been involved for many years in the project “Rhapsody in School”. He regularly gives master classes and helps to support young musicians in Europe, the USA, Asia and Australia.
Since his childhood, Daniel Müller-Schott has felt a great love for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. For his first CD record he chose the Six Suites for Cello Solo for Bach’s jubilee year in 2000.
Daniel Müller-Schott has already built up a sizeable discography in a career spanning twenty-five years under the ORFEO, Deutsche Grammophon, Hyperion, Pentatone and EMI Classics labels and includes among others, works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Haydn, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Schubert, Khachaturian, Shostakovich, Elgar, Walton, Britten and Dvořák.
His recordings have been enthusiastically received by both the public and the press and have also received numerous awards, including the Gramophone Editor’s Choice, Strad Selection, and the BBC Music Magazine’s “CD of the month”. He has been awarded the Quarterly Prize of German Record Critics for his recordings of the Elgar and Walton Cello Concertos with Oslo Philharmonic and André Previn and for his CD of the Shostakovich Cello Concertos recorded with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and Yakov Kreizberg. In France the “Solo Suites” by Benjamin Britten were awarded with the Diapason d’or and “Dvořák The Cello Works” with the “Choc de Classica”. For “Duo Sessions” Daniel Müller-Schott and Julia Fischer received the International Classical Music Award (ICMA) 2017. On his current CD with ORFEO (July 2019), Daniel Müller-Schott recorded works by Richard Strauss with pianist Herbert Schuch and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra with Sir Andrew Davis. Daniel Müller-Schott has recorded the last musical ideas by Ludwig van Beethoven together with Daniel Hope and Friends. All of the works are world premieres on recording and will be issued in an extensive Beethoven-Jubilee-Box on Deutsche Grammophon in November 2019. Likewise, for November 2019 a further CD release is planned for ORFEO: Pure CELLO – works for cello solo of the 20th/21th century – Prokofjev, Crumb, Hindemith, Henze, Casals, Müller-Schott and Kodály.
Daniel Müller-Schott can be regularly seen and heard on national and international radio broadcasters and on the TV channels ARD, ZDF, ARTE and 3Sat as a soloist in concert recordings and as an interview guest.
Daniel Müller-Schott studied under Walter Nothas, Heinrich Schiff and Steven Isserlis. He was supported personally by Anne-Sophie Mutter and received, among other things, the Aida Stucki Prize as well as a year of private tuition under Mstislaw Rostropovich. At the age of fifteen, Daniel Müller-Schott won the first prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in 1992 in Moscow.
For the historic celebration on the Day of German Unity in 2018 and in Memoriam to his deceased teacher Mstislav Rostropovich Daniel Müller-Schott played in front of about 500,000 listeners at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin music by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Beside the music Daniel Müller-Schott has also a considerable affinity for the fine arts, in particular for French paintings of the 19th century. During his travels he always visits the major museums, seeing the great masters in the original. The cellist regularly takes part in art projects himself, for example in the “Street Art“ project in Munich, Berlin (ARTE), Melbourne 2016 and as Artistic Director of the Classical Music Spring Festival Rugen 2010.
Daniel Müller-Schott plays the “Ex Shapiro” Matteo Goffriller cello, made in Venice in 1727.