Daniel Hope

Daniel Hope
Hope playing the violin at the Eurovision Young Musicians 2016 rehearsals
Born	(1973-08-17) 17 August 1973 Durban, South Africa
Education	Highgate School Yehudi Menuhin School
Alma mater	Royal Academy of Music
Occupation	Classical violinist
Parent(s)	Christopher Hope and Eleanor Hope
Awards	Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Daniel Hope (born 17 August 1973) is a South African-born classical violinist. He has appeared internationally as a concerto soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, broadcaster and artistic director, and has been an exclusive artist of Deutsche Grammophon since 2007.¹

Hope was born in Durban, South Africa, and is of Irish² and Jewish German descent, his maternal grandparents, formerly from Berlin, having escaped Nazism.³ His father is the novelist Christopher Hope, FRSL, and his mother Eleanor Hope worked as an assistant to Yehudi Menuhin.⁴ When Hope was six months old, his family moved from South Africa to London, England, because of his father's anti-apartheid views.⁵ In the UK, Hope was educated at Highgate School⁶ and studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey.

Hope later studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Zakhar Bron, Itzhak Rashkovsky and Felix Andrievsky, and gained a diploma (DipRAM) and fellowship (FRAM).⁵⁷⁸ In 2011, he was appointed visiting professor in violin by the Royal Academy of Music.⁵

Hope became the violinist of the Beaux Arts Trio in 2002.⁹ His burgeoning career led to his decision to leave the Beaux Arts Trio, which in turn led to the decision to disband the ensemble.¹⁰ The Beaux Arts Trio, with Hope as the final violinist in the history of the ensemble, gave its final concerts in August 2008.¹¹

Hope has served as an associate artistic director of the Savannah Music Festival.⁹ In April 2015 he was named the new music director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, effective in 2016.¹² 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.¹³

In 2019 he became artistic director of the Frauenkirche Dresden.⁸ In 2020 he became president of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, succeeding Tabea Zimmermann and following predecessors in the role that included Joseph Joachim and Kurt Masur.¹⁴¹⁵ In 2025 he became artistic director of the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and Academy.¹⁶¹⁷

Hope has appeared at venues and festivals including Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, the BBC Proms, Salzburg, Tanglewood, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival and Gstaad.⁸¹ He has worked regularly with orchestras in Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo.⁸

Hope has collaborated with conductors including Yehudi Menuhin, Roger Norrington, Thomas Hengelbrock, Christoph Eschenbach, Simon Rattle, Vladimir Jurowski, Iván Fischer, Christian Thielemann, Daniel Geiss and Nayden Todorov.^8141819

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.⁸

Hope plays the 1737²⁰ 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 2016.²¹

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,²² 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 under the title "Hope@Home on Tour", before the series came to a temporary halt.

In November 2020, 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 2020.²³

Hope is in his second marriage to the painter Silvana Kaiser.²⁴ The couple lived in Vienna and moved to Berlin in 2016. He holds Irish and German nationality.

Hope has recorded commercially for Deutsche Grammophon since 2007.²⁵²⁶

Recent releases include Music for a New Century with the New Century Chamber Orchestra, issued by Deutsche Grammophon in 2023 and including works by Philip Glass, Tan Dun, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Jake Heggie.²⁷ In 2024 he released Dance! with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and Irish Roots, a Deutsche Grammophon album combining Irish traditional material and classical repertoire, with collaborators including Lúnasa, Siobhán Armstrong, James Galway, Jeanne Galway, Rea Garvey, Ross Daly, Simos Papanas and the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Geiss.²⁸¹⁸²⁹

• Violin Concertos – Alban Berg, Benjamin Britten.
• East Meets West.
• Shostakovich: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2.
• Mendelssohn, with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock.
• Vivaldi.
• Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons.
• For Seasons.
• America.
• Music for Ukraine, with Alexey Botvinov.
• Silvestrov, with Alexey Botvinov.
• Music for a New Century, with the New Century Chamber Orchestra.
• Dance!, with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra.
• Irish Roots.

Hope has been recognised in the Echo Klassik awards, Germany's major classical music award until its renaming in 2018, and its successor award Opus Klassik.

• 2004: ECHO Klassik: Newcomer of the Year (Violin Concertos – Alban Berg, Benjamin Britten)
• 2006: ECHO Klassik: Chamber Music Recording of the Year (East Meets West)
• 2006: ECHO Klassik: Musician of the Year (Dmitri Shostakovich, Violin Concertos 1 & 2)
• 2008: ECHO Klassik: Concert Recording of the Year (Mendelssohn with Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conductor Thomas Hengelbrock)
• 2009: ECHO Klassik: Concert Recording of the year (Vivaldi)
• 2013: ECHO Klassik: Classic without Borders (Recomposed by Max Richter)
• 2017: ECHO Klassik: Classic without Borders (For Seasons)
• 2021: Opus Klassik: Special award