Daniel Hope (born 17 August 1973, Durban, South Africa) is a European classical violinist.
Hope was born in Durban, South Africa, and is of Irish [1] and Jewish German descent, his maternal grandparents, formerly from Berlin, having escaped Nazism. [2] His father is the novelist Christopher Hope, FRSL, and his mother Eleanor Hope worked as an assistant to Yehudi Menuhin. [3] At age six months, his family moved from South Africa to London, because of his father's anti-apartheid views. [4] In the UK Hope was educated at Highgate School [5] and studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Stoke d'Abernon. In 2011 he was appointed Visiting Professor in Violin by the Royal Academy of Music, where he had studied under Zakhar Bron and gained a diploma (DipRAM) and a fellowship (FRAM). [4] [6]
Hope became the violinist of the Beaux Arts Trio in 2002. [7] His burgeoning career led to his decision to leave the Beaux Arts Trio, which in turn led to the decision to disband the ensemble. [8] The Beaux Arts Trio, with Hope as the final violinist in the history of the ensemble, gave its final concerts in August 2008. [9]
Hope has served as an associate artistic director of the Savannah Music Festival. [7] In April 2015 he was named the new music director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, effective in 2016. [10] On 16 March 2018, at the conclusion of a joint performance by the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and New Century Chamber Orchestra at which he served as concertmaster, Hope was announced as the latter ensemble's new music and artistic director.
In 2017 he was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his merits in the musical constitution of commemorative culture.
Hope plays the 1737 [11] Guarneri "ex-Lipinski" violin.
Daniel Hope presented the 2013 documentary film The Secrets of the Violin, which explored the history of violin making from Amati, Stradivari and Guarneri to modern makers like Samuel Zygmuntowicz.
Hope and Tamina Kallert were the presenters for the Eurovision Young Musicians 2016 in Cologne, Germany on 3 September 2016. [12]
In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hope began a series of over 100 live concerts broadcast on Arte. These broadcasts under the title "Hope@Home" reached an audience of millions, [13] and earned an OPUS KLASSIK award, Sonderpreis der Jury für besondere Leistungen. The project began as house concerts filmed at his home in Berlin. Appearing with him were artists, often well known, who were also living in the city.
With the easing of lockdown in the summer of 2020, it became possible to move the concerts out of Hope's home to other locations ("Hope@Home on Tour") before the series came to a temporary halt.
In November, as social distancing tightened across Europe with the second wave of the pandemic, the series resumed in Hope's living-room, this time with a focus on young performers, as "Hope@Home Next Generation". In mid-November the Hope@Home team travelled to San Francisco where Hope worked with the New Century Chamber Orchestra and other artists. Returning to Berlin, the series continued into December 2020. [14]
In December 2021, a special Christmas concert was streamed on the ARTE Concert channel. [15]
Hope is in his second marriage to the painter Silvana Kaiser. [16] The couple lived in Vienna and moved to Berlin in 2016. He holds Irish and German nationality.
In 2020 Hope released a disc of highlights from the Hope@Home broadcasts and a Christmas compilation. He has recorded commercially for Deutsche Grammophon since 2007. [17] [18]
Hope has been recognised in the Echo Klassik awards (often stylized as ECHO Klassik, this was Germany's major classical music award until its renaming in 2018) and its successor award Opus Klassik.
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, was an American-born violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in Britain. He is widely considered one of the great violinists of the 20th century. He played the Soil Stradivarius, considered one of the finest violins made by Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari.
The Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, was written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1806. Its first performance by Franz Clement was unsuccessful and for some decades the work languished in obscurity, until revived in 1844 by the then 12-year-old violinist Joseph Joachim with the orchestra of the London Philharmonic Society conducted by Felix Mendelssohn. Joachim would later claim it to be the "greatest" German violin concerto. Since then it has become one of the best-known and regularly performed violin concertos.
The Yehudi Menuhin School is a specialist music school in Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey, England, founded in 1963 by violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin. The current director of music is the British classical pianist Ashley Wass. The school is one of the five established musical schools for school-age children in the United Kingdom, along with Chetham's School of Music, Wells Cathedral School, the Purcell School and St. Mary's Music School, Edinburgh. It is mainly funded by the Department for Education's Music and Dance Scheme, by philanthropic foundations, by donations and bequests from individuals, and by regular support from the Friends of the Yehudi Menuhin School.
Pamela Frank is an American violinist, with an active international career across a varied range of performing activity. Her musicianship was recognized in 1999 with the Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists. In addition to her career as a performer, Frank holds the Herbert R. and Evelyn Axelrod Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she has taught since 1996, and is also an Adjunct Professor of Violin at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music since 2018.
Anne-Sophie Mutter is a German violinist. She was supported early in her career by Herbert von Karajan. As an advocate of contemporary music, she has had several works composed especially for her, by Sebastian Currier, Henri Dutilleux, Sofia Gubaidulina, Witold Lutosławski, Norbert Moret, Krzysztof Penderecki, André Previn, Wolfgang Rihm, John Williams and others. Since her orchestral debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1977, Mutter has performed as a prominent soloist with numerous leading orchestras worldwide.
Chloë Elise Hanslip is a British classical violinist.
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Janine Jansen is a Dutch violinist and violist.
Vadim Viktorovich Repin is a Russian and Belgian violinist who lives in Vienna.
Julia Fischer is a German classical violinist and pianist. She teaches at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts and performs up to 60 times per year.
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Ray Chen is a Taiwanese-Australian violinist. He was the first prize winner of the 2009 Queen Elisabeth Competition and the 2008 International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition
Patricia Kopatchinskaja is a Moldovan-Austrian-Swiss violinist.
Kirill Troussov in Saint Petersburg, is a German violinist and violin teacher based in Munich, Germany.
Edna Michell is an Israeli-American violinist, pedagogue, and founder and director of music festivals, institutes, and concert series, known for her versatility and her efforts to expand the violin and chamber music repertoire.
The Eurovision Young Musicians 2016 was the eighteenth edition of the Eurovision Young Musicians contest, which took place on 3 September 2016, outside the Cologne Cathedral, in Cologne, Germany. For a second consecutive time, German public broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) was the host broadcaster for the event, with Daniel Hope and Tamina Kallert being the presenters for the show. Musicians representing eleven countries with European Broadcasting Union (EBU) membership, participated in the contest, with San Marino making their debut, while Greece, Moldova, Netherlands, and Portugal withdrew from participation. The candidates were accompanied by the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, conducted by Clemens Schuldt. A five-person jury decided which of the participants would be awarded with the top-three prizes. Łukasz Dyczko of Poland won the contest, with Czech Republic and Austria placing second and third respectively.
Milan Vitek is a violinist, conductor, educator and Professor of Violin at Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
In Mo Yang, also known as Inmo Yang, is a South Korean violinist. He is the first prize winner of the 54th edition of the International Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy in 2015 and the first prize winner of the Sibelius Competition in Helsinki, Finland in 2022. He is also the second prize winner in the senior division of the 2014 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists in Austin, Texas. In April 2016, he had made a debut at Carnegie Hall at the Weill Recital Hall with the Danish National Symphony conducted by Fabio Luisi.
Matthias Wollong is a German violinist.
Stephen Waarts is a Dutch American violinist. He was the first prize winner in the senior division of the 2014 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists in Austin, Texas. He was also the fifth prize winner of the 2015 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, Belgium.