Heinrich Schiff, who has died aged 65, was recognised as one of the finest cellists of the last quarter of the 20th century, and latterly established a parallel career as a distinguished conductor. After suffering a serious stroke in 2008, which left him partly paralysed for a time, he was obliged to abandon his career as a soloist but continued to conduct.

His repertoire as an instrumentalist ran from Bach, whose solo cello suites he played with particular distinction, through Shostakovich – his recordings of the two cello concertos remain benchmarks – to contemporary music, with which he also had an affinity. He was known as a versatile but focused artist whose musicianship was enriched by his historically informed approach to style. Having played the baroque cello as a student, he developed a personal style that successfully combined historicist principles with modern techniques. He insisted, for example, on using the urtext scores, drawn from original versions, for Haydn’s two cello concertos, and his lean and lithe playing of Bach, with its stylistically aware phrasing and articulation, won him many plaudits.

In 1986 he made his conducting debut, which was followed by appointments with the Northern Sinfonia (1990-96, before its Royal title), and Vienna Chamber Orchestra (2005-08), among others. In addition to accomplished interpretations of the classical repertory, including high-octane readings of Beethoven symphonies, he was known for his encouragement of contemporary music, giving the premieres of works by John Casken, Friedrich Cerha, Luciano Berio, Hans Werner Henze and Krzysztof Penderecki. His chamber partners included the violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, and he recorded Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano with Till Fellner (1998). The cellists Gautier Capuçon, Truls Mørk and Natalie Clein were among his notable pupils.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Heinrich Schiff performing Schumann’s Cello Concerto

Born in Gmunden, Austria, to Helga (nee Riemann) and Helmut Schiff, both composers, Heinrich studied the cello with Tobias Kühne and André Navarra, making his solo debuts in Vienna and London in 1971. He subsequently studied conducting with Hans Swarovsky and made his podium debut in 1986.

His playing of the Bach suites was distinctive. The preludes would be sculpted with sweeping gestures, while the following movements unfolded lines in which semiquavers might be given short shrift but which straddled the barline and pulsated with life. Above all they danced and sang.

In the big concertos of the Romantic repertory he deployed a more generously upholstered tone, but one that was always centred. If it was the energy and dynamism of his readings of the Shostakovich concertos that struck the listener most forcefully, they were often tellingly poignant, too. His 1985 recordings of those works won him the Grand Prix du Disque. His accounts of the Schumann and Dvořák concertos were alert to their demonstrative and introverted qualities alike. In the Elgar, too, he tapped the vein of wistfulness to memorable effect, and for his recording of the Brahms Double Concerto he was joined by Zimmermann, with Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Heinrich Schiff in Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 1

He played with many leading orchestras and conductors including Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Bernard Haitink and Simon Rattle, as well as Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Charles Mackerras, whose historically informed approach he shared.

Speaking about the technical aspect of performance, Schiff emphasised the importance of practising scales and exercises to develop and maintain finger velocity and bowing mastery alike. In such exercises, he believed, craftsmanship could be separated from emotional expression, the better to perfect one’s technical control. They also helped to develop physical fitness: “‘You have to be fitter than required and you have to have more skill than needed,” he maintained.

Of the works written for him, Casken’s concerto of 1991 opens with the cello “singing” a five-line haiku of the composer’s own by expressing it in a lyrical way while observing the syllabic structure. According to Casken, Schiff was able in performance to make that introduction, and indeed the whole work, “sing and dance in ways I had not thought possible”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Heinrich Schiff in Bach’s Suite No 3 for Cello

Schiff similarly exploited the long, singing lines of the concerto by Cerha, which he premiered in 1998, bringing it to the BBC Proms the following year. He also performed works with orchestra by less well known composers, including Johannes Maria Staud and Otto M Zykan.

As a conductor, Schiff transformed the sound of the Northern Sinfonia during his time as its artistic director. The string sections of other orchestras with which he worked, including the Copenhagen Philharmonic (1996-2000) and the Orchester Musikkollegium Winterthur, also benefited greatly from his experience.

His manner could be brusque and some found him difficult, but the twinkle in his eye, his sense of humour and a somewhat roguish manner made him very characterful. He could be generous, but did not like to have his wishes ignored, and woe betide the photographer who decided to snap him, having been asked not to. In 2003 he began a concert with the Munich Chamber Orchestra with a declaration against the decision to invade Iraq.

Schiff is survived by his older brother, Christian, also a musician.

• Heinrich Schiff, cellist, born 18 November 1951; died 23 December 2016