Tuba or not to be

Anne Mentzen was born in Braunschweig in 1981, where she received her first piano lessons at the age of five. At the age of nine she began horn lessons and from 1998 was trained by Theodor Wiemes, principal horn of the Radiophilharmonie Hannover. After graduating from high school, she began studying horn in the fall of 2000 in the class of Marie-Luise Neunecker at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main. From 2003 she studied with Thomas Hauschild at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Leipzig, where she graduated with honors. Anne Mentzen won several federal prizes at “Jugend musiziert” as well as prizes at other competitions, both with the horn and on the piano. In 1999, in addition to the first national prize, she was awarded a special prize by the Hanover Artists’ Association and in 2000 she was also awarded the Lower Saxony Prize for “outstanding achievements in the cultural field”. She has also received scholarships from the Volkswagen Bank (1999), the Richard Wagner Association (2000), and the Gustav Mahler Academy (2002, 2005). The hornist gained orchestral experience in the state and national youth orchestras, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, and was invited several times to the International Orchestra Academy of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. After an internship with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and a temporary position with the Staatsorchester Kassel, she went to the Deutsche Oper Berlin as an intern in 2005. Since 2006 Anne Mentzen has been a horn player with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. Here she plays in various chamber music formations, such as the ensemble “Samtblech”.

Fabian Neckermann, born in 1995 in Ochsenfurt, Lower Franconia, has been principal tuba in the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin since 2018 and has also been a lecturer at the Anton Rubinstein International Music Academy since 2021.
After starting out in the local music association, he completed a two-year training programme to become a state-certified ensemble leader at the vocational school for music in Bad Königshofen with instrumental teacher Udo Schneider. In 2013, he studied with Prof. Jens Bjørn-Larsen at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, where he completed his bachelor’s degree with top marks.

He gained his first orchestral experience as a member of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and the European Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, as well as an academy member of the Nuremberg State Philharmonic and the Bavarian State Orchestra in Munich.
Guest appearances as an orchestral musician have also taken him to the opera houses in Würzburg, Saarbrücken, Bonn, Hamburg and Berlin, as well as to the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Fabian Neckermann was a finalist in the 2016 German Music Competition, whereupon he received a special prize from the Capriccio Kulturforum – Gesellschaft zur Förderung von klassischer Musik und Kultur e.V. and was accepted as a scholarship holder in the 61st Federal Selection of Concerts by Young Artists. In the final, he performed as a soloist with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn.

With his ensemble “Trio 21meter60”, consisting of three tubas, he was awarded the OPUS KLASSIK in 2022.
He is also a regular guest in ensembles such as “Genesis Brass”, the “Brass Ensemble Ludwig Güttler” and the “Brass Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra”.

Philipp Beckert was born in Dresden. He attended the specialised school for music and studied violin at the conservatories in Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin.
At the same time, he attended masterclasses with Ruggiero Ricci, Ion Voicu, Saschko Gawriloff and André Gertler. Beckert joined the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra as first violinist in 1986 and was deputy concertmaster there until 1996. He has been a member of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in the first violin section since 1996. Philipp Beckert has appeared in RSB chamber concerts with solo works by Eugene Ysaÿe and Niccolò Paganini. In 2005 he presented the “Beckert Quartet Berlin” (BQB) as part of the RSB chamber concerts together with Franziska Drechsel, Andreas Willwohl and So Yung Lee.

In 2010, at the suggestion of Marek Janowski, he put together a high-calibre ensemble to rehearse Franz Schubert’s Octet, in which he himself played the first violin part. The octet was performed on the occasion of a Schlüterhof concert by the RSB at the German Historical Museum.
Together with the Israeli pianist Einav Yarden, Philipp Beckert played Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata in further RSB chamber concerts in 2011, as well as César Franck’s Violin Sonata in 2013. In 2015, he took on the role of first violin in Arnold Schönberg’s string sextet “Verklärte Nacht”, again at a Schlüterhof concert. He has performed as a soloist with the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra and the Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt. He has also taken part in numerous world premières by contemporary composers. The Hamburg label Es-Dur released a CD with the octet by Franz Schubert and the octet “Dunkle Lichter” by Mario Wiegand.
In 2016, Philipp Beckert recorded Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s flute quartets on CD with his colleagues Ulf Dieter Schaaff, Andreas Willwohl and Georg Boge for the Dutch label PENTATONE.

Richard Polle was born into a family of musicians. At the age of six, he began his first violin lessons with his mother. At 12, Richard started his studies as a junior student at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar with Jost Witter and continued his education two years later at the Musikgymnasium Schloss Belvedere Weimar. He completed his bachelor’s degree with honors under Josef Rissin at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe and earned his master’s degree with Antje Weithaas at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” Berlin.

He won numerous national and international competitions, including first prizes and special prizes in solo and duo categories at the “Jugend musiziert” national competition, the international violin competition “Postacchini” in Fermo (Italy), the “Villa de Llanes” competition in Llanes (Spain), as well as awards at the international violin competition “Kocian” in Ústí nad Orlicí (Czech Republic), the international Lake Constance Violin Competition, and the competition of the Kulturfonds Baden e.V.

He has performed with the Kammerorchester der Rheinischen Philharmonie Koblenz, the Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Suhl, the Philharmonisches Orchester Erfurt, the Philharmonie der Stadt Kirow (Russia), the Junge Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim, and the Kurpfälzisches Kammerorchester Mannheim. He has also participated in several masterclasses, including those with Thomas Christian, Olga Parkhomenko, Roman Nodel, Ana Chumachenko, Boris Garlitsky, and Jörg Widmann.

Richard Polle has been a scholarship recipient from the Thüringen Ministry of Culture, the Sparkassenstiftung Erfurt, the Friends of the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, the Musikinstrumentenfonds of the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, and received the Gerd Bucerius Scholarship from the ZEIT Foundation in the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.

From 2014 to 2016, he was a scholarship holder at the Orchestral Academy of the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, and since 2016, he has been a permanent member of the first violins.

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.

Hans-Jakob Eschenburg received his first cello lessons at the Rostock Conservatory. After studying with Josef Schwab at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” Berlin, he was principal cellist of the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1984 to 1988.

With the renowned Petersen Quartet, of which he was a founding member until 2000, he won several international competitions (Prague, Evian, Florence, Munich) and appeared on the major concert stages and at numerous festivals in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia. Several of the Petersen Quartet’s numerous CD recordings have won international awards.

Since 1999 Hans-Jakob Eschenburg has been principal cellist of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. He held the same position in the chamber orchestra “Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach”. He frequently appears as a soloist and chamber musician, including as a member of various chamber ensembles such as the Gideon Klein Trio. Hans-Jakob Eschenburg teaches as an honorary professor at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” Berlin. He is also involved as a mentor of the Orchestra Academy of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.