“As an interpreter, I’ve started trusting my inner life more and letting the audience in,” he says. “It’s a kind of vulnerability that makes you stronger.” His first child was born at the end of 2018. Since then, his conviction has grown, his sense for metaphor expanded.
He knows that making music for an audience occasionally involves tipping the scales too far one way or another. But he is aware of his responsibility toward what is often called the “intentions of the composer.” He dives deep into scores, investigating the organic connections that give a work its unity. “If you know one room in an apartment, but not that the apartment has seven other rooms, you won’t even understand the room you’re in,” he says.
For Julian, these experiences and encounters are the result of organic growth, not external pressure.
It’s a development that tends to happen when a musician of his ability goes through life with an open mind.
His playing is effortless, unhindered by technical boundaries. He derives energy from appearing not to try. It’s a quality that many look for and few find. He sees his talent and his musical upbringing as a gift. His mentors are responsible for the rest.
“My very first teacher considered lightness and simplicity to be at the core of cello playing,” Julian says. “Listen to yourself, plan what you’re doing, get it right the first time. I owe everything to these insights.” He studied with Ulrich Voss, Gustav Rivinius, Boris Pergamenschikow, Heinrich Schiff and Antje Weithaas. Now he is a teacher himself, at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich.
On this recording Julian Steckel plays a cello by Andrea Guarneri (Cremona, 1685). When he’s not performing, he lives in Berlin.

Daniel Raiskin became quickly recognized as one of the most versatile conductors of the younger generation. He cultivates a broad repertoire, often looks beyond the mainstream in his strikingly conceived programmes. A son of a prominent musicologist, Daniel Raiskin grew up in St. Petersburg. He attended music school from the age of six and went on to the celebrated conservatory in his native city, where he studied viola and conducting. Inspired to take up the baton by an encounter with the distinguished teacher Lev Savich, he chose to make a gradual transition into a conducting career. At the age of twenty, Daniel Raiskin left the Soviet Union to continue his studies in Amsterdam and Freiburg, and was soon in demand as one of Europe’s leading viola players, both as a soloist and chamber musician. He also took classes with maestri such as Mariss Jansons, Neeme Järvi, Milan Horvat, Woldemar Nelson and Jorma Panula.
Since 2005, Daniel Raiskin has been the Chief Conductor of the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie in Koblenz, and since 2008 has held the same title with the “Artur Rubinstein” Philharmonic Orchestra in the Polish city of Lodz. His regular guest engagements across Europe and Asia include working with first rate Orchestras in Belgrad, Copenhagen, Düsseldorf, Buenos Aires, Jena, Hong Kong, Krakow, Malmö, Salzburg, Taiwan, Hannover, Porto, Lyon, Marseille, México, Mainz etc.
Among the major soloists with whom Daniel Raiskin has appeared are Martin Fröst, Alban Gerhardt, Natalia Gutman, Gerhard Oppitz, Janine Jansen, Kari Kriikku, Lang Lang, Francois Leleux, Alexei Lubimov, Mischa Maisky, Midori, Shlomo Mintz, Daniel Müller-Schott, Steven Osborne, Enrico Pace, Ivo Pogorelich, Julian Rachlin, Vadim Repin, Benjamin Schmid, Dmitri Sitkovetsky, Julian Steckel and Alexei Volodin.
Recent recordings include the entire Brahms symphonies for the label TwoPianists and Shostakovich Symphony No. 4 for the label CAvi-music, both to great critical acclaim. His recording of cello concertos by Korngold, Bloch and Goldschmidt with Julian Steckel for the label CAvi-music received an ECHO Klassik Award in 2012. „Daniel Raiskin is clearly a musician of sensibility, well versed in his craft; a further example perhaps of one last great gift of the old Soviet Union, the rigour and distinction of its conducting schools.” (Gramophone, 2/2012)