“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.