Maximilian Otto was a student at the Sächsisches Landesgymnasium für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden in the major subjects piano and double bass and in the minor subjects composition and conducting. Since October 2018, he studies orchestral conducting at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden with Prof. Ekkehard Klemm. He is a scholarship holder of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German National Academic Foundation) since 2019.

He has received numerous composition prizes, including the Bialas Prize of the GEMA Foundation and ten national prizes at the national competition “Jugend Komponiert”. He also conducted many of his world premieres and regularly conducts orchestras such as the Elbland Philharmonie Sachsen, the Sinfonietta Dresden, the Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie Chemnitz and his own orchestra “Junge Sinfonie Dresden”. In 2019, he performed his piano concerto as a soloist six times with the Elbland Philharmonie Sachsen. In the same year, his orchestration of Contrapunctus I from J. S. Bach's The Art of Fugue was performed with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. The same arrangement would have been heard in 2020 in the 9th symphony concert of the Staatskapelle Dresden—the performance was unfortunately cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In Wiepersdorf, Maximilian Otto would like to reflect intensively on his authenticity as a conductor and honesty in making music—completely free of any apparent constraints or expectations that one believes one must fulfill. In addition, he would like to use the time to plan his next orchestral work and expand his conducting repertoire through study.