Bio

German-American cellist Peter Schmidt is invited to play as soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, the United States, Colombia and Mexico. He is a regular guest at international festivals such as Podium Festival Esslingen, the Festival Mas y Mas in Barcelona, Músics en Residència Alella, Encuentro de Musica de Camara UNICACH and Paaxfest in Mexico.  In 2013 he recorded a CD with the works for cello and piano by Pablo Casals with pianist Katia Michel for the label Klassic Cat. He is artistic director of the chamber music festival Pòdium Internacional Matadepera, which took place for the first time in 2014. Peter performs as soloist with orchestras such as the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, the Budweis Philharmonic Orchestra, the Konstanz University Orchestra, the Munich International Orchestra and the A-Orchester der Bundeswehr.

At the age of five he began his musical studies, first with piano lessons and three years later with cello lessons. At the age of 16 he was accepted into the class of Markus Wagner in the Musikhochschule Nürnberg-Augsburg. In 2007 he finished his studies at the Musikhochschule Munich with Wen-Sinn Yang and in 2010 received a chamber music degree with special honors from the Musikhochschule Detmold, where he studied with members of the Auryn Quartet. In 2012 he was awarded a prestigious Konzertexamen degree with special honors from the Robert-Schumann-Hochschule in Düsseldorf, where he studied with Gregor Horsch, principal cellist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. He has taken part in master classes with Claude Starck, Wolfgang Boettcher, Gustav Rivinius, Jens-Peter Maintz, Frans Helmersson, Eberhard Feltz, Menahem Pressler, Andras Schiff, Arnold Steinhardt and Ana Chumachenco among others.

Peter Schmidt combines his activities as a performer with those as a teacher. He was assistant teacher at the Master Classes for Chamber Music, Violin, Viola and Cello in Groznjan, Croatia in 2009. Since 2010 he has been invited on several occasions by the Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas, Mexico to give master classes and concerts; in 2012 he conducted a master class for cello and chamber music at the Conservatori del Liceu in Barcelona, in 2013 he gave classes at the Robert-Schumann-Hochschule Düsseldorf, substituting for his former teacher Gregor Horsch and in 2014 he was invited to give master classes at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá.