Daniel Dodds

Conductor and violinist Daniel Dodds serves as artistic director of Switzerland’s Festival Strings Lucerne, where he has earned broad acclaim, while also appearing as soloist with numerous leading orchestras worldwide.

Born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1971 to Australian Chinese parents, Dodds began violin studies at five under Alita Larsens. At fourteen he lived for a year with his family in Linz, Austria, attending classes at the local music Gymnasium; that experience solidified his decision to pursue music professionally. At seventeen, armed with scholarships that enabled study in Switzerland, he left Australia. His training took place at the Hochschule Luzern with Gunars Larsens and at the Utrecht Conservatory with Keiko Wataya. After graduating with honors from both institutions, he participated in master classes led by Nathan Milstein—who declared he could be Paganini’s grandson—Franco Gulli, and Rudolf Baumgartner.

Baumgartner exerted a particularly formative influence: Dodds has performed on a Stradivarius once owned by the elder musician, and it was Baumgartner who secured him a position with the Lucerne Festival Strings. In 2006 he made his first recording, joining the Phoebus Quintet for an album of Ferenc Farkas chamber works, and he has remained a committed chamber-music performer ever since.

He advanced to artistic director of the Lucerne Festival Strings, frequently appearing with the ensemble and shaping its timbre in the Viennese tradition associated with Baumgartner and earlier members. During his tenure the group became the first Swiss orchestra invited to the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and has performed at the Schleswig Holstein Festival, the Rheingau Music Festival, and the Hong Kong Music Festival. Dodds has broadened the repertory by introducing works from Peteris Vasks and Sofia Gubaidulina as well as newly commissioned scores by Luigi Laveglia and Stephan Hodel.

Maintaining connections to Australia, he has performed with the Australian World Orchestra and served as guest concertmaster of both Camerata Salzburg and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. As soloist he has appeared with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, among others. Dodds led the Lucerne Festival Strings in a 2014 recording alongside violinist Arabella Steinbacher and again in a 2020 album with violinist Midori that included Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61. In 2022 he conducted the ensemble in Mozart’s “Haffner” Serenade, K. 250, released on the Sony Classical label.