Friedrich Thiele & Naoko Sonoda
Biography Friedrich Thiele & Naoko Sonoda
Friedrich Thiele
born in 1996, has won a range of prestigious national and international awards, such as 2nd place, the public choice award and the prize for best interpretation of a commissioned work at the 2019 ARD Music Competition and the 2019 Deutscher Musikwettbewerb award. His international career began after his achievements at the 2019 Instrumental Competition Markneukirchen (2nd place, the public choice award, the orchestra prize), the 2017 Music competition “Ton & Erklärung” in Munich (1st place), as well as at the 2015 TONALi Competition in Hamburg (3rd place and the public choice award).
Since 2016 he has studied with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar. Previously, he was trained by Peter Bruns for five years as a junior student at the University of Music and Theatre “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig.
As a soloist he has performed with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Symphonic Orchestra of the National Theatre Claudio Santoro of Brasilia, the Bremen Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra in Caracas and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. Friedrich Thiele’s soloistic performances have already taken him to many of the great concert halls, such as the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, the Elbphilharmonie and the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, and the Herkules Hall and the Gasteig in Munich.
As an avid chamber musician, Friedrich Thiele has played at the Heidelberger Frühling, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Molyvos International Music Festival and the Vadim Repin and Trans-Siberian Art Festival, where he performed with Igor Levit, Benjamin Beilman, Volker Jacobsen, Viviane Hagner and Marc-André Hamelin, among others.
Since 2010 Friedrich Thiele has been sponsored by the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and plays a French cello from the 2nd half of the 19 th century from the Deutscher Musikinstrumentenfonds.
Naoko Sonoda
studied in Tokyo and at the Berlin University of the Arts under Rainer Becker. Further musical inspiration came from Tabea Zimmermann, Natalia Gutmann and Markus Nyikos. Following her studies, she was engaged as a collaborative pianist at the Berlin University of the Arts as well as at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin and the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar—a position which she still holds today.
As a collaborative pianist she has performed at international festivals and in concert halls including the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, the Berliner Philharmonie and Carnegie Hall in New York. Additionally, she has given several live performances with various public radio broadcasting corporations such as the BBC, ZDF, BR and RBB.
As a renowned chamber musician, she made a name for herself with the prize of “best collaborative pianist” not only at the Witold Lutosławski International Cello Competition (2015, 2018) but also at the International Tchaikovsky Competition (2015, 2019).
