Lydia Rinecker - Principal Viola

Lydia Rinecker has been the principal violist of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra since 2016. From 2014 to 2015, she held the same position with the Staatskapelle Weimar. Born in Meiningen in 1989, she attended the Music High School Schloss Belvedere in Weimar and then studied at the music universities in Weimar and Berlin, specializing in viola under Erich Krüger and Ditte Leser.

She is a prizewinner of various national and international competitions. Among her accolades, she received multiple 1st prizes at the national “Jugend musiziert” competition, the 1st prize at the 17th International Johannes Brahms Competition, a 3rd prize at the Walter Witte Viola Competition in 2011, and a special prize for “outstanding talent” at the 62nd International Music Competition of the ARD, awarded by the Henning Tögel Talent Promotion Foundation. In 2011, she was a scholarship recipient of the “Hans and Eugenia Jütting” Foundation in Stendal.

During her studies, she gained orchestral experience as a substitute in the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig and the Staatskapelle Weimar. As a soloist, Lydia Rinecker has performed with orchestras such as the Staatskapelle Schwerin, the Orchestra of the Theater Vorpommern, the Central German Chamber Philharmonic, the Czech orchestra “Virtuosi Brunensis,” and the Young Symphony Orchestra Berlin.

She plays a viola made around 1860 by the violin maker Karl Brandl from Pest.