NATALIE CLEIN
Described by The Times as ‘mesmerising’ and ‘soaringly passionate’, British cellist Natalie Clein has built a distinguished career, regularly performing at major venues and with orchestras worldwide.
She has recorded regularly for Hyperion, including the two cello concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns, Bloch’s Schelomo and Bruch’s Kol Nidrei with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, as well as three discs for EMI. Her recordings have won such awards as a Classical Brit, Gramophone and BBC Record of the Month and a Diapason d’Or.
She has regularly been invited to work with major orchestras worldwide, including the Philharmonia, Hallé, Bournemouth Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Orchestre National de Lyon, New Zealand Symphony, Opole Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Symphony and Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires, and has performed with conductors including Sir Mark Elder, Sir Roger Norrington, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Leonard Slatkin, Heinrich Schiff and José Serebrier.
In recital she appears frequently with artists including Cedric Pescia, Marianna Shirinyan and Julius Drake. She has also worked with Martha Argerich, Ian Bostridge, Simon Keenlyside, Imogen Cooper, Lars Vogt, Isabelle Faust, Nurit Stark, Ruby Hughes and Yeol Eum Son.
A strong advocate for new works, she gave world premieres of Sir John Tavener’s Flood of Beauty, with the Britten Sinfonia, and of Charlotte Bray’s The Certainty of Tides, with Aurora Orchestra, and has previously commissioned works from Brian Elias and Thomas Larcher. She has also been involved in cross-disciplinary projects with the dancer Carlos Acosta, writer Jeanette Winterson and director Deborah Warner, among others.
In recent months, she has performed solo at Wigmore Hall and is currently the Artistic Director of the Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival, Dorset. She has curated series for BBC Radio 3 at LSO St. Luke’s and as part of King’s Place’s Cello Unwrapped. From 2015 to 2019, she was Artist in Residence and Director of Musical Performance at Oxford University and since 2018 has been Professor of Cello at the Rostock Academy of Music in Germany. She is also Professor of Cello at the Royal College of Music.
Born in the United Kingdom, Natalie came to widespread attention after winning both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and the Eurovision Competition for Young Musicians in Warsaw. She studied at the Royal College of Music in London and with Heinrich Schiff in Vienna. In 2021, Natalie was awarded an OBE for her services to music.
She plays the ‘Simpson’ Guadagnini cello of 1777.