Daniel Hope - Overview | Deutsche Grammophon

Few performers can match the intensity and humanity of Daniel Hope’s music-making or his passion for artistic exploration. His understanding of musical line and expression took root under the early care of his mentor, Yehudi Menuhin; it has matured fully since, enabling him to deliver strikingly personal interpretations of everything from Bach, Handel and Vivaldi to Takemitsu, Tavener and Turnage.

His projects have drawn attention to the fate of musicians murdered by the Nazis, stories of others affected by hatred and bigotry, the work of composers neglected by history, and the ongoing war in Ukraine. “I’ve been fascinated by what music can achieve, and I put together different projects every year that in a sense have a kind of political stance,” Hope observes. “And yet I’m not a politician. I’m a musician. But I do believe musicians can use their talents and their communication to make certain things happen.”

As well as presenting a weekly radio show on Germany’s WDR3 station, Daniel Hope is the author of four best-selling books for the German-language market. In 2016 he established Hope@9pm, a series of “salon” events at the Berlin Konzerthaus that combined performance with discussions featuring guests from the worlds of culture and politics. In 2020, he hosted the Hope@Home concerts: 150 events, livestreamed daily from his home during the early months of the pandemic. The initiative was recognised in October 2021 with the OPUS KLASSIK Special Achievement Award and led to the filming of several “Hope & Friends” holiday concerts for ARTE TV.

Over the past three decades Daniel Hope has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors. He has also worked closely with composers from Schnittke, Birtwistle, Takemitsu and Gubaidulina to Philip Glass, Valentin Silvestrov and Max Richter, and has commissioned and premiered many new scores. In high demand as concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician, he performs at the world’s most prestigious concert halls and festivals. He became the youngest-ever member of the Beaux Arts Trio in 2002 and gave 400 concerts with the legendary ensemble before its final performance in 2008.

Between 2004 and 2019 Hope served as Associate Artistic Director of the Savannah Music Festival and at the start of the 2016–17 season he succeeded Roger Norrington as Music Director of the Zürcher Kammerorchester. Two years later he was appointed Music Director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO) in San Francisco, where his tenure has recently been extended to the end of the 2029–30 season, making him the orchestra’s longest-serving MD. In 2019 Hope became the first ever Artistic Director of the Dresden Frauenkirche, which he sees as a symbol of peace, reconciliation and tolerance, and 2020 was appointed President of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn. Since the start of the 2025–26 season he has been Artistic Advisor of the Wolf Trap Foundation’s “Chamber Music at the Barns” series in Virginia, and in November 2025 he was unanimously elected as the new Intendant and Artistic Director of the Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy.

Daniel Hope launched his recording career in 1999, soon securing a reputation as one of the most distinctive and compelling virtuosos of his generation with the diversity of his studio repertoire. In 2007 he signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon and marked his yellow label debut with an album of works by Mendelssohn, including the original version of the Violin Concerto in E minor. That same year he also recorded Schulhoff’s Sonata for solo violin for Anne Sofie von Otter’s album of music written by Jewish composers imprisoned in the Terezín concentration camp.

He has gone on to become one of the world’s most prolific classical recording artists, and his DG discography also includes Air – A Baroque Journey (2009); The Romantic Violinist (2011); Spheres (2013); Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons (2014); Escape to Paradise (2014); Daniel Hope – My Tribute to Yehudi Menuhin (2016); For Seasons (2017); and Journey to Mozart (2018).

Three further albums appeared in 2020, starting with Belle Époque, presenting works by Elgar, Debussy, Chausson, Zemlinsky and Schoenberg. This was followed by an album documenting the Hope@Home chamber concerts, and then by the release of a recording made to mark the 75th anniversary of the Zürcher Kammerorchester, comprising works by Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Elgar.

2021 saw the release of Schnittke: Works for Violin and Piano, made with Ukrainian pianist Alexey Botvinov, and Hope, a selection of music by Schubert, Elgar, Pärt and Ramírez. In March 2022 Hope issued an album exploring the roots and distinctive qualities of American music. Recorded with the Zürcher Kammerorchester and a stellar array of guest artists, America features new arrangements of works by Bernstein, Cook, Copland, Ellington, Gershwin, Price, Ward and Weill.

In the spring of 2022, Hope and Botvinov, the latter by this time an enforced exile from Odessa, joined forces to support the people of Ukraine with benefit concerts in Dresden and Berlin. They then recorded Music for Ukraine, a digital EP of works by Silvestrov, Myroslav Skoryk and Jan Freidlin whose proceeds were donated to international aid charity “Aktion Deutschland Hilft” for its work in Ukraine. At the same time, the Beethoven-Haus Bonn set up “Hope for Peace”, an emergency aid programme to support refugee musicians from Ukraine in various ways.

Hope and Botvinov had already planned an all-Silvestrov album as the follow-up to their Schnittke project, but their plans acquired a new significance as events continued to unfold. Released in September 2022, Silvestrov presents the world premiere recording of Pastorales 2020 alongside “Chopin-Augenblicke” from the Zwei Stücke (2003), the three miniatures of 25.X.1893…zum Andenken an P.I. Tschaikowskij and the Hommage à J.S.B.

Hope’s next album was Music for a New Century, recorded as part of NCCO’s 30th-anniversary celebrations. Botvinov joined the ensemble and its MD in Philip Glass’s Third Piano Concerto and Tan Dun’s Double Concerto for violin, piano, percussion and strings. The album also features Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Lament and Jake Heggie’s Overture and was released in June 2023.

In February 2024 DG issued a recording inspired by the violinist’s long-held fascination with the power of dance. The repertoire on Dance! ranged from the 14th-century Lamento di Tristano to music by Wojciech Kilar, via classics by Purcell, Handel, Mozart, Saint-Saëns, Florence Price and Duke Ellington, among many more. This was followed five months later by Irish Roots, an album that grew out of Hope’s exploration of his paternal family’s origins in Ireland and the connections between folk and classical music in that country.

Hope’s latest recording, Born in Ukraine – 150 Years of Ukrainian Music, reflects his long-term and ongoing engagement with Ukrainian culture. It features works for violin and piano which Hope performs alongside three young Ukrainian pianists – Vitalii Kyianytsia, Alina Pronina and Roman Fediurko. Together they explore music by three living composers – Silvestrov, Alexey Shor and Kyianytsia himself – as well as works by five pioneering figures from Ukraine’s musical past: Lysenko, Bortkiewicz, Leontovych, Stepovy and Lyatoshynsky. Born in Ukraine is set for release digitally and on CD on 6 November 2026.

In 2004 Hope was named “Young Artist of the Year” at the Classical Brits. He has won numerous ECHO and OPUS Klassik Awards as well as the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, Prix Caecilia, “Diapason d’Or of the Year”, the 2014 Edison Classical Award Special Prize and four Grammy® nominations. His achievements have also been recognised with the European Cultural Prize for Music (2015) and with Germany’s highest civilian accolade, the Federal Cross of Merit (2017).

Daniel Hope was born in Durban, South Africa in 1973. When he was six months old, his father, the distinguished novelist, poet and anti-apartheid activist Christopher Hope, was granted an exit visa on condition that he never return to the country. The family moved to Paris, then London, where Hope’s mother, Eleanor, became secretary and subsequently manager to Yehudi Menuhin. Daniel played with the violinist’s grandchildren as an infant and was inspired by him to study violin with Sheila Nelson, one of England’s finest teachers of young musicians. He enrolled at London’s Royal College of Music in 1984 and subsequently studied at the Royal Academy of Music. Hope launched his professional career in the early 1990s and crowned his formal training with lessons from Zakhar Bron between 1992 and 1998. He plays the 1742 “ex-Lipiński” Guarneri del Gesù, placed generously at his disposal by an anonymous family from Germany. 

10/2026