Friedrich Thiele - Violoncello

The cellist Friedrich Thiele has been a " WCO Young Artist" since 2020. Thiele has won numerous national and international prizes. Most notably, Thiele won 2nd prize at the ARD International Music Competition 2019, as well as the audience prize and the prize for the best interpretation of the commissioned work. Thiele has since performed as a soloist with renowned orchestras at home and abroad. As a passionate chamber musician, he has already appeared at top-class chamber music festivals and played there with Igor Levit, Benjamin Beilman, Volker Jacobsen, Viviane Hagner, Marc-André Hamelin and Julia Fischer, among others. Since 2021, Thiele has taken on the position of 1st Concertmaster of Violoncellos at the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden. Thiele's education includes a Bachelor of Music degree from the Hochschule für Musik "Franz Liszt" in Weimar and subsequent studies of excellence at the Kronberg Academy with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt.

Dominik Wagner - Kontrabass

Since 2022, double bassist Dominik Wagner has been a "WCO Young Artist". As a scholarship holder of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation and ECHO Klassik prize winner, the native Viennese is well on his way to becoming a new formative representative of his instrument. Wagner has won prizes at the renowned ARD Music Competition, the Eurovision Young Musicians Competition and the International Bradetich Competition in the USA, among others. In the course of his young career, Dominik Wagner has already performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Chamber Orchestra and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. He is particularly interested in expanding the double bass repertoire. Despite his youthful age, Dominik Wagner is also already in great demand as a teacher. He has been giving master classes regularly for several years, including in the USA, London, Germany, Holland and Austria. He is associated with the WCO through performances at the subscription concerts 21/22 in Heilbronn and Ulm as well as the highly acclaimed CD recording "Revolution of Bass", for which he received an Opus Klassik Award in the category "Young Artist of the Year" in October 2022.