The clarinettist Peter Schmidl was born in Olmütz, now Olomuc in the Czech Republic, and studied at the Vienna Musikhochschule, now the Music University, with Rudolf Jettel, where he was awarded a diploma with distinction. In 1965 he joined the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, where he is now principal clarinettist. He has appeared as a soloist with the orchestra, as well as with the MDR Orchestra in Leipzig, the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, and the New Philharmonia in Tokyo, among others, in collaboration with conductors including Leonard Bernstein, André Previn, Karl Böhm, James Levine, Ricardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and Christoph Eschenbach.

Since 1967 he has served as a professor at the Vienna Music University and has given master-classes in Europe and Japan.

Peter Schmidl has recorded the greater part of the clarinet repertoire, notably Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto under Leonard Bernstein, Bernstein’s jazz Prelude, Fugue and Riffs, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for wind instruments under Karl Böhm, and chamber music by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Weber, Schoenberg, Danzi, Ibert and Hindemith, collaborating with András Schiff, Edita Gruberova, Cecilia Bartoli and others. He is featured on the Naxos recording ‘The Art of the Clarinet’ (8.557232).