Introducing COYO Music Director Daniel Reith

As he begins his tenure in Cleveland, Daniel Reith looks to share the electrifying power of music he experienced while growing up in Germany.

Daniel Reith was raised in a small town in Southwest Germany, surrounded by apple trees, vineyards, and the foothills of the Black Forest mountains. He grew up in a non-musical family, however, his lack of exposure to the vast history of music only made the process of falling in love with it that much more exciting — discovering endless portals to alien realms, each filled with life-affirming experiences.

Daniel was three years old the first time music captured his interest, when his 10-year-old brother Manuel started piano lessons. Manuel only practiced for five minutes before each of his lessons at a standing keyboard and quickly abandoned the instrument. But Daniel picked up the melodies and began teaching himself. By age eight, Daniel asked his parents if he could take piano lessons at a local music school, and those lessons eventually led to his participation in youth piano competitions, first in Germany and later across Europe.

He later began attending concerts. When he was 15, he attended the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra’s performance of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. Reith had gone with an interest in hearing Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, but the riveting Shostakovich ignited his dream of becoming a conductor.

“During this piece, I felt pressed into my chair,” Reith recalls. “I couldn’t breathe anymore. All my muscles stuck together, especially in the second movement … It was just incredible to feel the deepest depression of the first movement towards this grotesque, sarcastic ‘killing’ atmosphere of the second movement towards the triumphant end.”

Having been so moved by the symphony was an epiphany for Reith, and he saw conducting as a means to pursue more of these experiences. “I was just thinking, ‘What is this music doing to me?’ I couldn’t sleep for two nights after hearing that. … I was fascinated by how it could show me emotions that I have never felt before. … That was a moment for me where I thought I want to explore this music and discover all the different corners of it.”

Reith hopes to provide COYO students with similarly electrifying experiences. During his own time in youth orchestras, he remembers being influenced by the conductors’ curiosity. “For me, the most inspiring conductors were the ones who shared their burning fascination for the repertoire with the orchestra. … This is exactly what I want it to be like for COYO. We will have a broad repertoire with very different styles in our season program, and use curiosity as the driving motor of all our work.”

He also hopes young musicians unlock the exciting and fulfilling treasures left behind by composers through music theory. “Music theory, for me, was always a very fun activity because I felt very enriched by feeling that I cracked the code of the piece. I was trying out different keys to the piece, and finally, I figured out how it was constructed, and I got an insight into the brain of the composer.”

But above all, Reith just hopes to create enriching experiences for young musicians that will last a lifetime, no matter what career path they pursue. “I think the awareness of being an individual within a larger group is an important lesson for one’s whole life. It would be impossible to distinguish between music-making and learning for life in general. Everything is music, and everything is life.”

— Lizzie Manno