SOPHIE HEINRICH is concertmaster of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.
She started playing violin at the age of 4, studied with Prof. Antje Weithaas at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin and with Prof. Thomas Brandis, with whom she completed her postgraduate studies in his soloist class at the University of Music Lübeck with top marks and whose assistant she was until his death. She also specialised with renowned musicians such as Gidon Kremer, Midori, Reinhard Goebel, Lothar Strauss and the Artemis Quartet.
She won the Leopold Mozart (1999), Louise Henriette (2002) and Max Rostal (2002) international competitions, she also won the Possehl Music Prize of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck. (2008), and in 2009 she distinguished herself as the best German among the last six violinists in the semi-finals of the ARD competition at the Herkulessaal in Munich.
As a soloist and chamber musician Sophie Heinrich has appeared at festivals in Germany and abroad, performing with renowned orchestras such as the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Chamber Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. She has recorded for the ORF (Austrian Radio), German National Radio and a number of regional radio stations, Sat 3, Arte TV, etc.
Since 2018 she has been the artistic director of the outdoor classical music concert series “By the Forest Lake” at Sammatz in Wendland.
For seven years she taught violin and chamber music at the Music Academy in Lübeck, and in Chile she devoted herself to teaching socially disadvantaged children and young people. Today, she teaches private lessons and conducts master and chamber music courses.
She has been a grantee of several German foundations for education and support of musical life, and is an active member of Yehudi Menuhin’s Live Music Now Association.
From 2012 to 2019, the talented violinist served as first concertmaster of the Komische Oper Berlin, and has often been first concertmaster of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian State Opera, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Staatskapelle Berlin, etc. Since June 2019, she has held the position of First Concertmaster of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.
Sophie Heinrich plays on a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Milan, 1753, instrument given to her by the Vienna Symphony Association, as well as a and on a new violin by David Bagué i Soler, fecit in Barcelona 2010.