RELOCATED: Teatime Classics

Friedrich Thiele regularly impresses the jury at major music competitions with his fine playing and musicality. In 2019, for example, he won both second prize and the audience prize at the ARD Music Competition and also at the International Instrumental Competition in Markneukirchen. And the audience at »Teatime Classics« can likewise look forward to an appearance by the 24-year-old cellist, who has been sponsored by the foundation Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben for ten years now. 
 
All three works on tonight’s programme can be seen as gifts made mongst friends. Henri Dutilleux’s »Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher« may elicit memories of the famous Viennese cake in the context of »Teatime«, but they were actually written as a serenade for the 70th birthday of conductor Paul Sacher. Schubert likewise dedicated his virtuoso Arpeggione Sonata to a fellow musician: in his day, Vinzenz Schuster was the leading master on the arpeggione, a mixture of the guitar and the cello with six strings and frets that is held between the player’s legs and played with a bow. This instrument later sank into oblivion, with only the nickname of the sonata serving as a reminder. Shostakovich wrote his D minor Sonata for his friend the cellist Viktor Kubackij, and, the Romantic air of the music notwithstanding, it is still imbued with the irony characteristic of the composer.
 
Friedrich Thiele is accompanied by Naoko Sonoda, who is not only an established concert pianist, but also a sought-after chamber musician and répétiteuse. She also teaches at music colleges in Berlin and Weimar.