Chamber Music Evening N° 8

Yuki Manuela Janke

Born into a family of musicians in Munich, her career began at an early age. Her breakthrough came at the latest with numerous prizes at the Sarasate, Paganini and Tchaikovsky competitions, which quickly took her to the world's most important stages as a soloist. As a soloist and chamber musician, Yuki Manuela Janke also inspires as concertmaster of the most traditional orchestras. Her interpretation of Richard Strauss' "Heldenleben" in the Golden Hall in Vienna with the Staatskapelle Dresden and Christian Thielemann attracted particular attention.

As concertmaster of the Staatskapelle Berlin, she enjoys the trust of conductors such as Daniel Barenboim and Zubin Mehta. She is a regular guest with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and various orchestras abroad. She received her most important musical impulses from Igor Ozim at the Mozarteum Salzburg and through chamber music collaborations with Christoph Eschenbach, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, the Hagen Quartet and the Tokyo String Quartet. Her broad repertoire ranges from baroque and romantic music to contemporary composers such as Jörg Widmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Krzysztof Meyer, Nicolas Bacri and Markus Schmitt. Her repertoire also includes forgotten works such as Franz Clement's Violin Concerto, which Janke recorded with Reinhard Goebel and the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra. 

She plays on a violin by Robert König & Michael Betcher.

Friedrich Thiele

Friedrich Thiele, born in Dresden in 1996, has won numerous prestigious national and international prizes, including 2nd prize, the audience prize and the prize for the best interpretation of the commissioned work at the 2019 ARD International Music Competition and the 2019 German Music Competition prize.

Successes at the International Instrumental Competition Markneukirchen 2019 (2nd prize, audience prize, orchestra prize), the ‘Ton & Erklärung’ competition in Munich 2017 (1st prize) and the TONALi competition 2015 in Hamburg (3rd prize and audience prize) paved the way for his international career.

He has already performed as a soloist with many outstanding orchestras, such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the National Theatre Brasília, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar in Caracas. These engagements have taken him to many prestigious venues and concert halls, such as the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, the Elbphilharmonie and Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, the Meistersingerhalle in Nuremberg, the Konzerthaus Berlin and the Herkulessaal and Gasteig in Munich.

He has been 1st concertmaster of the cellos in the Staatskapelle Dresden since 2021. As a passionate chamber musician, he has already performed at renowned international festivals with Igor Levit, Julia Fischer, Tabea Zimmermann, Antoine Tamestit, Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Nils Mönkemeyer, among others.

Friedrich Thiele began his studies in 2011 with Peter Bruns as a junior student at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater ‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’ in Leipzig before completing his Bachelor of Music at the Hochschule für Musik ‘Franz Liszt’ Weimar in 2016. He received his Master of Music in 2023 at Kronberg Academy in the class of Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt.

Friedrich Thiele plays a cello by Francesco Goffriller (ca. 1740), which is on generous loan to him from the Stradivari Foundation Habisreutinger-Huggler-Coray.

Catarina Koppitz

Catarina Koppitz was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1995 and began taking cello lessons with Professor Andrej Michalczyk at the age of six. After studying with Professor Paulo Gaio Lima at the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra in Lisbon from 2013 to 2016, she joined Professor Gregor Horsch's class at the Robert Schumann University of Music in Düsseldorf in 2016, where she completed her bachelor's degree in 2019.

She received important musical inspiration in masterclasses with Wen-Sinn Yang, Anner Bylsma, Xavier Gagnepain, Maria de Macedo, Márcio Carneiro, Filipe Quaresma, Johannes Moser, Amit Peled and others.

She has played in various youth orchestras, such as the Gustav Mahler Academy (2018), the European Union Youth Orchestra (2018/2020), the Moritzburg Festival Academy (2019), the Pacific Music Festival (2017) and the Cuban-European Youth Academy (2018).From the 2019/20 season onwards, Catarina was an academician with the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, during which time she continued her master's studies with Professor Gregor Horsch at the RSH in Düsseldorf. She was a scholarship holder of Live Music Now (2017-2021) and received the Germany Scholarship. She gained orchestral experience with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra and the Bielefeld Philharmonic Orchestra.

Catarina Koppitz has appeared several times as a soloist with the orchestra in Lisbon and also had the opportunity to perform Antonín Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B minor in Romania in January 2020.

Since the 2021/22 season, Catarina Koppitz has been a permanent member of the cello section of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden.