Profile

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 also took classes with such maestri as Mariss Jansons, Neeme Jarvi, Milan Horvat, Woldemar Nelson und Jorma Panula. At the age of 20, 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 as a chamber musician.

He chose to make a gradual transition into a conducting career and soon became recognised as one of the most versatile conductors of the younger generation. Raiskin, who cultivates a broad repertoire, often looks beyond the mainstream in his strikingly conceived programmes. Since 2005, Daniel Raiskin has been 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 guest engagements across Europe and Asia include the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Czech Radio Symphony, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Latvian National Orchestra, Malmo Symfoniorkester, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Orquestra Nacional do Porto, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Mexico, Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, Polish National Radio Symphony of Warsaw and Katowice, Prague Philharmonic, Prague Symphony, Residentie Orkest Den Haag, RTE Orchestra Dublin, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, Slovak Philharmonic Bratislava, Staatskapelle Halle, Staatsorchester Darmstadt, Stavanger Symfoniorkester, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, Symfonie Orkest Vlaanderen and the Zagreb Philharmonic. Among the major soloists with whom Daniel Raiskin has appeared are Martin Frost, Alban Gerhardt, Natalia Gutman, Peter Jablonski, Janine Jansen, Kari Kriikku, Lang Lang, Alexei Lubimov, Mischa Maisky, Vladimir Mendelssohn, Midori, Schlomo Mintz, Daniel Muller-Schott, Steven Osborne, Enrico Pace, Ivo Pogorelich, Julian Rachlin, Benjamin Schmid, Hagai Shaham, Dmitri Sitkovetsky and Julian Steckel. His regular appearances in the opera house have included Carmen, directed by Calixto Bieito for the Dutch company Opera Zuid in 2006/2007, and also the following season at the Koblenzer Stadt Theater, where he conducted Shostakovich’s The Nose in November 2010. In August 2011, Raiskin conducted the Minsk Orchestra in an acclaimed production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the St. Margarethen Opernfestspiele in St. Margarethen, Austria. Daniel Raiskin’s engagements in the 2011/12 season include performances as guest conductor with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orkest van het Oosten and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.