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.

Lukas Stepp

Lukas Stepp has been concertmaster of the 2nd violins of the Staatskapelle Dresden since the beginning of 2019.

He received the most important impulses for his violin playing from Stephan Picard and Feng Ning at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin and from Ida Kavafian at the Juilliard School of Music in New York from 2016 to 2018.

Lukas Stepp is a multiple first prize winner and special prize winner of the national competition ‘Jugend musiziert’. He has won further prizes as a soloist at international competitions such as the Johannes Brahms Competition (2010), the ‘Julio Cardona’ competition in Portugal (2011) and the ‘Schoenfeld International String Competition’ (Harbin/China 2014).

Lukas Stepp has performed as a soloist with the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra, the Carinthian Symphony Orchestra, the Young Ensemble Berlin, the Baden-Württemberg State Youth Orchestra, the Hildesheim State Theatre, the Baden Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hamburg Camerata, among others.

Lukas Stepp was first violinist of the ‘Stepp Quartet’, which performed at festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Rheingau Music Festival and the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival between 2001 and 2012. He regularly performs with chamber music partners such as Tobias Feldmann, Kit Armstrong, Hyeyoon Park and Luke Hsu.

Michael Schmid

Michael Schmid initially received his violin training as a junior student with Prof Conrad von der Goltz. After leaving school, he studied in Salzburg and Vienna with Prof Harald Herzl and Prof Christian Altenburger. He received further musical impulses in the class of Prof Ingolf Turban, in chamber music studies with Prof Rainer Schmidt (Hagen Quartet) and in masterclasses with Leonidas Kavakos, Christian Tetzlaff and Prof Igor Ozim.

He has already gained orchestral experience in the German National Youth Orchestra, later as an academy member of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, as a substitute in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and the Camerata Salzburg.

Michael Schmid was a scholarship holder of the Vienna Philharmonic Summer Academy and the Kronberg Academy Festival, is a first prize winner of the national competition ‘Jugend musiziert’ and a prize winner of the International Johannes Brahms Competition.

In 2017, he completed his studies at the Vienna University of Music with honours and became a member of the 2nd violins of the Staatskapelle Dresden.

He has performed as a soloist in Alban Berg's violin concerto Kapelle für alle Fälle ‘Dem Andenken eines Engels’, as a chamber musician at the Musikverein Vienna, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and on tours in Asia and South America.

As well as chamber music, Michael Schmid is passionate about supporting young musicians. From 2019 to 2022, he served on the board of the Giuseppe Sinopoli Academy of the Staatskapelle Dresden. From 2024 to 2025, he taught a class at the Regensburg University of Music.

Elea Nick

Elea Nick was born on 9 August 1999 in Zurich into a family of musicians. From 2007, she attended Jörg Hofmann’s talent class in Freiburg im Breisgau. As the youngest student at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Elea Nick was accepted into Prof. Zakhar Bron’s masterclass in 2012. She went on to study with Pierre Amoyal, Julia Fischer, Vadim Repin, Natalya Prischepenko and Pavel Vernikov.

She won first prizes at international competitions in Novosibirsk (Russia), Lublin (Poland) and Sofia (Bulgaria), and has performed with leading orchestras such as the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Camerata Zürich, the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Shaanxi Symphony Orchestra. For over a year, a Swiss TV crew accompanied Elea Nick as part of the documentary ‘Meisterschülerinnen – der Traum einer Solokarriere’ (Master Students – The Dream of a Solo Career), which was broadcast in March 2016 on the programme ‘Sternstunde für Musik’.

In 2021, Elea Nick completed both a Bachelor’s degree in Music under Professor Zakhar Bron and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science at the University of Zurich. A year later, she went on to complete a Bachelor’s degree in Law at the University of Zurich, followed in 2024 by a Master of Performance under Professor Zakhar Bron at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía. At the same time, she completed her Master’s degree in Law at the University of Zurich. In 2025, she also completed a Master’s degree in Political Science at the Fernuniversität Hagen.

She has been a permanent member of the first violins at the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden since 2024.
 

Holger Grohs

Holger Grohs wurde 1972 in Erlangen geboren und erhielt seinen ersten Violinunterricht im Alter von sechs Jahren.

Sein Musikstudium absolvierte er an der Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main bei Walter Forchert, später an der Musikhochschule Würzburg bei Herwig Zack, wo er sein Meisterklassendiplom erhielt. Einen wesentlichen Einfluss auf seine künstlerische Entwicklung hatte Franco Gulli, bei dem Holger Grohs zwei Jahre an der Indiana University in Bloomington in den USA studierte.

Weitere Anregungen holte sich Holger Grohs bei zahlreichen Meisterkursen und Festivals, wie z.B. als Stipendiat der »Carl Flesch Akademie« in Baden-Baden bei Saschko Gawriloff, bei der »Accademia Musicale Chigiana« in Sienna oder dem Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo.

Seit 2001 musiziert Holger Grohs in den Reihen der Violinen der Sächsischen Staatskapelle Dresden, 2013 wurde er Stellv. Konzertmeister der 2. Violinen, im Dezember 2015 wurde er zum Konzertmeister der 2. Violinen ernannt. 

Marie-Annick Caron

Marie-Annick Caron received her first musical training in her native Canada, initially on the violin with Helene Roberge and later on the viola with Robert Verebes at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. In 1999, she moved to Weimar and studied with Prof Erich Krüger at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. After an engagement with the chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy in Canada, she became a member of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden in 2001.

Marie-Annick Caron is also active in the promotion of young talent and currently teaches at the Carl Maria von Weber Academy of Music.

She is particularly dedicated to chamber music and regularly performs in chamber music evenings with the Staatskapelle and at international chamber music festivals.

Titus Maack

Titus Maack was born in 1986. He attended the Carl Maria von Weber State Music School and then studied at the Dresden University of Music and Theatre of the same name. He transferred to the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin and the Rostock University of Music and Theatre, where he completed his studies. He then played as deputy principal cellist at the Staatstheater in Kassel during the 2012/13 concert season. He has been a permanent member of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden since 2013. He is also a welcome guest with the Dresdner Kapellsolisten, the Virtuosi Saxoniae and the ensemble frauenkirche.

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.

Volker Hanemann

Volker Hanemann was born in Cologne in 1966 and studied oboe and English horn with Winfried Liebermann at the music academies in Lübeck and Heidelberg-Mannheim. From 1987 to the summer of 2000, he was engaged as an English horn player at the National Theater in Mannheim and worked as a tutor at the local music academy.

Robert Oberaigner

Clarinettist Robert Oberaigner was born in Hall in Tyrol, Austria, and studied at the Tyrolean State Conservatory and the Vienna University of Music. He completed his studies with Sabine Meyer at the Musikhochschule Lübeck.

In addition to winning several 1st prizes in competitions for young musicians, he is also a prizewinner of the ‘Musica Juventutis’ foundation of the Vienna Konzerthausgesellschaft. At the age of 17, he was already playing as a substitute in concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra. At the age of 19, he made his debut as a soloist at the Vienna Konzerthaus.

Solo and chamber music appearances have taken him to the Vienna Musikverein, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Mozarteum Salzburg and the Cologne Philharmonic with musicians such as Leonidas Kavakos, Nils Mönkemeyer, Christian Gerhaher, Sol Gabetta and others. He has also performed at festivals such as the BBC Proms, the Lucerne Festival, the Salzburg Festival and ‘Mostly Mozart’ New York.

Robert Oberaigner devotes himself intensively to playing historical clarinet instruments, which he plays himself as a member of ensembles such as ‘Concerto Köln’ or the Dresden Festival Orchestra and teaches in masterclasses worldwide.

He is in demand as a guest with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian State Orchestra in Munich and the Super World Orchestra in Japan and has performed in concerts with the Camerata Salzburg for many years.

From 2002 to 2013, he was principal clarinettist of the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, with whom he performed works by R. Strauss and W. A. Mozart as a soloist.

Since February 2014, he has been principal clarinet of the Staatskapelle Dresden.

In 2016, he released his debut CD with works for clarinet and piano by the composer Max Reger for MDG. A recording of the clarinet sonatas and trio by Johannes Brahms with Norbert Anger, cello, and his long-time piano partner Michael Schöch was also released in 2018.

Most recently, Robert Oberaigner recorded the first complete recording of the clarinet works of M. Weinberg (NAXOS) under the musical direction of Mikhail Jurowski.

Christian Dollfuß

Born in Bochum in 1969, Christian Dollfuß began his musical education at the Music Academy of Dortmund. He later studied under Hans Gutmann at Folkwang University in Essen. Together with the other members of »Trio Contrasts« he also studied chamber music performance under Vladimir Mendelsohn from 1997 to 2000. With this ensemble Dollfuß has recorded a CD of 20th century chamber music. 
 
Before Christian Dollfuß joined the Staatskapelle Dresden he was principal clarinet with the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra from 1993 to 1998. Between 1996 and 1998 he was engaged by the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra as well as the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne.