Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt already attracted attention at numerous competitions during his studies with David Geringas and Aldo Parisot. He won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the German Music Competition. At the International Rostropovich Competition, the jury chaired by Mstislav Rostropovich awarded him the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris and also the prize for contemporary music.

Since then, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt has conquered the concert stages of the world as a soloist - with renowned orchestras in Europe, Russia and the USA, such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonieorchester, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Prague under renowned conductors such as Marek Janowski, Charles Dutoit, Sir Donald Runnicles, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jiri Belohlavek and Gabriel Feltz, Michael Sanderling, Nicholas Milton, Markus Poschner and many others. He is also a welcome guest at the Ludwigsburg Schlossfestspiele, the Rheingau Music Festival and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, where he has performed together with Christoph Eschenbach.

In addition to his solo activities as a cellist, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt is an enthusiastic chamber musician. He was a member of the Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center in New York and has formed the successful cello duo "Cello Duello" with Jens Peter Maintz for around 30 years. Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt is also passionately dedicated to contemporary music. He has premiered works by Eva-Pekka Salonen, Alfred Schnittke, Christian Jost, Fabrice Bollon and Sören Nils Eichberg, among others.

In recent years, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt has increasingly focussed on his work as a conductor - a stringent return to what was already part of his studies at the Juilliard School in New York. He has received invitations to conduct the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra, the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra and the Hof Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the St. Petersburg State Orchestra, the INSO Lviv, the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, the Northwest German Philharmonic Orchestra, the Württemberg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Southwest German Chamber Orchestra. Guest conducting engagements have taken him to Switzerland, Poland and Spain.

As chief conductor of the chamber orchestra "Metamorphosen Berlin", which he founded, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt has led the ensemble at numerous concerts in Germany, Spain and Switzerland as well as at concerts in the Elbphilharmonie and the Konzerthaus Berlin, where the orchestra has found an artistic home with its own series. In recent years, the orchestra has recorded two critically acclaimed CDs for Sony Classical with works by Dvořák, Suk and Tchaikovsky under his direction.

Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt's recordings of various cello concertos were also released by Sony Classical, while his recording of Ernest Bloch's "Voice in the wilderness" was released on the Capriccio label. For his recording of Carl Maria von Weber's Piano Quartet with Isabelle Faust, Boris Faust and Alexander Melnikov, he was honoured with the German Record Critics' Award and the Diapason d'Or in 2013.

In addition to his appearances as a conductor, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt also regularly performs in a dual role as both soloist and conductor. Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt teaches as a professor at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar, the Berlin University of the Arts and Kronberg Academy.