Çiğdem Tunçelli was born in Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1999 and received her first violin lessons at the age of five. She won numerous prizes early on, including first prize for violin at the Swiss Youth Music Competition. From 2015, she studied with Gyula Stuller at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne and completed her bachelor’s degree with the highest honours. This young violinist then studied with Eva-Christina Schönweiß at the Hanns Eisler Musikhochschule Berlin before moving to Raphael Oleg at the Musikhochschule Basel in autumn 2023. Çiğdem Tunçelli pursued her special interest in Baroque music at the renowned Scola Cantorum Basiliensis. In the course of her training, she also had lessons with Leonidas Kavakos, Donald Weilerstein, Schmuel Ashkenasy, Gabor Takacs-Nagy and the Ysaÿe and Aviv Quartets.

A passionate orchestral and chamber musician, Çiğdem Tunçelli is a member of several prominent youth orchestras and has performed at many international summer festivals under conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding and Valery Gergiev. She was also invited to the Yellow Barn Festival in the USA in summer 2022 and 2023. Social issues are also close to Çiğdem Tunçelli’s heart, to this end she has already given numerous concerts with Musethica, whose purpose is to enable disadvantaged people and groups to enjoy concert experiences.

Julia Pałęcka first studied violin and viola in Warsaw and then continued her studies at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music (UMFC) in Warsaw with Konstanty Andrzej Kulka. A year later, she began her viola studies with Hartmut Rohde at the University of the Arts in Berlin. She has also attended numerous masterclasses.

Julia Pałęcka has won prizes at many international and national viola and chamber music competitions and has performed at international music festivals, including the IMS Prussia Cove, the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, the Zermatt Festival and Manchester Music Festival, as well as many others. She has worked with many prominent musicians, including Bruno Giuranna, Kim Kashkashian, Miguel da Silva, Philip Setzer, Sergey Malov, Lukas Hagen, Noah Bendix-Balgley and Wolfgang Böttcher. She has also performed in major concert halls such as the Berlin and Warsaw Philharmonie, Konzerthaus Berlin, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing and others. From 2021 to 2023 she was a member of the Kurt Sanderling Academy of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin.

Born in Wiesbaden in 2003, Johann Warzecha received his first double bass lessons at the age of six at the local music school. He later moved to Frankfurt, where he was taught by Kai von Goetze. Johann Warzecha has been studying with Prof Rick Stotijn at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf since 2021. He has also gained further inspiration in masterclasses with Olivier Thiery, Burak Marlali, Rodrigo Moro and Dane Roberts.

Johann Warzecha won prizes at the national Jugend musiziert competition as a young musician and was part of the German National Youth Orchestra. He has also been a member of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie since 2021 and regularly plays in the Spira Mirabilis project. In recent years, Johann Warzecha has developed a special interest in historical performance practice. He is a member of the European Union Baroque Orchestra and regularly plays with ensembles such as the L’Orfeo Barockorchester, Concerto Köln and the Neumeyer Consort.

Sophie Stein has been playing the oboe since the age of nine and received her first lessons from Detlef Groß. She was enthusiastic about orchestral playing from an early age and was initially a member of the NRW State Youth Orchestra in 2014 and the National Youth Orchestra from 2015 to 2019. There, she also had the opportunity to take part in various projects including under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, Alondra de la Parra, Kirill Petrenko, Elias Grandy and Paavo Järvi.

Sophie Stein is a multiple national prizewinner of Jugend musiziert and was awarded a special prize in the category ‚Best Interpretation of a Contemporary Work‘ in the WESPE competition in 2018. From 2016 to 2018, this young oboist was a junior student of Kai Frömbgen at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf and the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, where she completed her bachelor’s degree in 2023. In 2015 and 2017, she was given the opportunity to perform as a soloist with an orchestra: First as the winner of the Bühne frei competition with the Niederrheinische Sinfoniker and later with the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen as part of a charity concert. From, 2018 she was a scholarship holder of the Dr Carl Dörken Foundation for two years, in 2022 solo oboist of the Moritzburg Festival Academy and in 2024 she participated in a project as solo oboist under the direction of Daniel Barenboim. Since the 2023 autumn term, Sophie Stein has been studying for her master’s degree with Viola Wilmsen at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin.

Born in 2001, Pedro Silva began his musical career at the age of four in the tradition-steeped wind band Banda de Música de Famalicão, before beginning his musical training on the bassoon at the Centro de Cultura Musical at the age of ten. At the age of 12, he continued to develop his musical skills at the Escola Profissional Artística do Vale do Ave, initially with his teacher Lurdes Carneiro and later with Sandra Ochoa and Hugo Mendes. He finally completed his bachelor’s degree at the Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo do Porto, where he was taught by Pedro Silva, Raffaele Giannotti and Axel Benoit. Today, this young Portuguese bassoonist, who is currently completing his master’s degree with Guilhaume Santana at the Hochschule für Musik Saar, works with various orchestras and ensembles, including the Orchestre de Chambre de Luxembourg, the Staatstheater Saarbrücken, the Orquestra do Norte, the Orquestra Clássica do Centro, the Mannheim Philharmonic and others.

Pedro Silva was a member of the Jovem Orquestra Portuguesa in the 2020/21 season and has played in the Famalicão Youth Orchestra since 2019. In the 2022/23 season, he received a guest contract with the Philharmonic Orchestra of the City of Trier. He is also a passionate chamber musician and regularly collaborates on chamber music projects with various ensembles. In 2019, he won 2nd prize at the national Prémio Jovens Músicos in Portugal with the In time quintet.

Born in Shenzhen, China, Penghua Huang discovered his passion for music, especially symphonies, at a young age. He received his first violin lessons at the age of six. Under the guidance of his teachers Ling Jing and Xu Zhang from the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, he further developed his skills and gained much recognition as a winner of several prizes at various youth competitions during his childhood. In 2010, he became a member of the Shenzhen Youth String Orchestra, where he also became principal 2nd violin. From 2018, Penghua Huang studied with Wei Wei at the Xinghai Conservatory of Music. Due to his outstanding achievements, he was also awarded a scholarship from the Xinghai Conservatory of Music.

In 2020, this young violinist ventured to Germany to continue his studies at the University of the Arts in Bremen where he was taught by Stefan Latzko. He also expanded and deepened his knowledge of orchestral training under the guidance of Thomas Klug. Penghua Huang devotes himself with great dedication to both orchestral and chamber music activities, where he is able to further develop his talent.

During her school days Friederike Latzko was a junior student at the University of Music in Cologne, where she received intensive chamber music lessons from the Amadeus Quartet. After earning her university entrance qualification, she changed to the University of the Arts in Berlin, where she gained further ensemble experience in all of the major West Berlin orchestras. She was a DAAD and Herbert von Karajan Foundation scholarship holder, associate teacher and lecturer with the German National Youth Orchestra and the Young German Philharmonic, as well as chamber music partner to renowned soloists.

In 1980, Friederike founded The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen together with like-minded fellow students – at first under the name ›Chamber Orchestra of the Young German Philharmonic‹, then later from 1987 in Frankfurt ›Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie‹. In the meantime, she has been a solo violist and dedicated music teacher here for over 30 years.

With Mark Scheibe, she created the ›Melody for Life‹ and with Rodrigo Blumenstock, Stefan Latzko and Gunther Schwiddessen the orchestra project ›Sinfonia Concertante‹, in which members of The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen play alongside dedicated amateurs.

Friederike Latzko has two grown-up children and spends any spare time in her studio painting and working on her next exhibition.

Rebecca Falk, born in 1998, was initially a junior student at the Musikhochschule Freiburg for four years. She studied cello and piano with Beverley Ellis, Elena Cheah and Christoph Sischka. From 2017 to 2023, she studied with Troels Svane at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, later in Hanover with Alvin Wong. She is now continuing her Master’s degree in Leipzig with Prof Peter Bruns. This passionate young musician has already won several prizes with her cello playing, including numerous special prizes at WESPE and four first national prizes at Jugend musiziert. In 2015, she was also awarded the Eduard Söring Prize of the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben together with pianist Viktor Soos. In the same year, she completed a traineeship with the Sinfonieorchester Basel. She also won a place in the orchestra academy with Lübeck Philharmonie and has been a member of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie for a number of years.

In addition to performances throughout Germany, this young cellist has already given concerts in France, Switzerland, Denmark, Hungary and Bolivia. In summer 2019, she performed with Janine Jansen, Amihai Grosz and Jens Peter Maintz at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. As a passionate chamber musician, she also performs regularly with the Luboš Ensemble and Trio Phi. As passing on the joy of music is also a matter close to her heart, until very recently she also taught at the Musik und Kunstschule Lübeck.

Ema Bajc began her musical journey in her native city of Ljubljana. She gave her first public performance at the age of 13 with a solo concert and the chamber orchestra of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra. Since then, she has devoted herself entirely to music. After graduating from specialist secondary music school in Ljubljana with Nataša Paklar, Ema Bajc first studied in Mainz with Dejan Gavrić and then went on to study for a master’s degree with Kersten McCall at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam.

In recent years, Ema Bajc has performed in many youth and professional orchestras, including in Germany with the Junge Norddeutsche Philharmonie, the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, the Gürzenich Orchestra Köln and in the Netherlands with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Noord Nederlands Orkest. Ema Bajc also played in the European Union Youth Orchestra under Vasily Petrenko and was a member of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra until 2022. From July 2022 to February 2024, she was a fixed-term member of the Bremen Philharmoniker under the direction of Marko Letonja.

After a successful audition, Ema Bajc was accepted in January 2024 as an academy member of the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen.

Philipp Hertkorn began learning to play the clarinet from his father, aged five. He also received piano lessons from his mother and percussion lessons at the local music school. Even before going to music college, he won several first prizes at national level in the Jugend musiziert competition. He also won third prize in the Wetzlar Clarinet Competition. He gained his first orchestral experience with the local youth band in his home town on Lake Constance. Since the autumn term of 2021, Philipp Hertkorn has been studying with Kilian Herold at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. He has also completed numerous masterclasses, including experiences with Wenzel Fuchs, Harri Maki and François Benda, Sharon Kam and Sebastian Manz.

Philipp Hertkorn performed as a soloist with the Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock as part of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in summer 2022. He was also a scholarship holder of the Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation and the Helene Rosenberg Foundation, both of which support highly talented students. Since summer 2023, he has been a permanent member of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, which regularly performs in concert halls such as the Elbphilharmonie, the Berlin and Köln Philharmonie and the Alte Oper Frankfurt.

Peter McNeill was born in Scotland in 1998 Between 2016 and 2020 he studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with David Flack, Christopher Gough, Beccy Goldberg and Hugh Potts, and later, as part of the Erasmus programme, with Jörg Brückner at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar. Since 2023, this young horn player has been studying for a master’s degree with Markus Maskuniitty at the Hoschschule für Musik Theater und Medien in Hanover. He has also completed masterclasses with Frøydis Ree Wekre, Saar Berger, Erja Joukamo-Ampuja and Felix Klieser.

Peter McNeill has been a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and has also gained experience in many other orchestras, including the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of Scottish Opera, the Scottish Ballet and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. In 2019, McNeill won the 1st prize of the prestigious Governors‘ Brass Prize and in 2020 the Head of Brass Prize of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. McNeill received his most recent award in 2023 at the Yamaha Dublin Brass Week Concerto Competition, where he won 1st prize. In addition to his main instrument, this enthusiastic chamber musician also plays the natural horn, the Wagner tuba and the bagpipes.