Natalie Clein
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Natalie Clein (born 25 March 1977) is a British cellist, born in Poole, Dorset. She started playing the cello at the age of six, and has studied with Anna Shuttleworth and Alexander Baillie at the Royal College of Music where she was awarded the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Scholarship. She came to prominence after winning the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in 1994 with an outstanding performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto. She was the first British winner of the Eurovision Competition for Young Musicians in Warsaw, playing the Shostakovich Sonata and Elgar's concerto. She has also studied with Heinrich Schiff in Vienna.
Natalie Clein’s exceptional musicality has earned her a number of prestigious prizes including the Classical Brit Award for Young British Performer of 2005 and the Ingrid zu Solms Cultur Preis at the 2003 Kronberg Academie. She won the BBC Young Musician of the Year (aged 16) in 1994 and in the same year was the first ever British winner of the Eurovision Competition for Young Musicians in Warsaw. She was awarded the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Scholarship by the Royal College of Music before completing her studies with Heinrich Schiff in Vienna.
Highlights of her 2005/6 season include return engagements with the London Chamber, Manchester Camerata, Scottish Chamber, City of London Sinfonia and Vienna Chamber orchestras as well as tours with The Philharmonia and her debut with the Orchestre National de Lyon with Leonard Slatkin.
She made her concerto debut at the BBC Proms in August 1997, performing the Haydn Cello Concerto in C major with Sir Roger Norrington and the National Youth Chamber Orchestra of Great Britain and has since appeared in venues throughout the UK such as the Royal Festival Hall, Barbican, Bridgewater Hall and Birmingham’s Symphony Hall. She has performed as a soloist with most of the UK’s major orchestras, including the London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony, The Philharmonia, Royal Scottish National, Hallé and BBC orchestras with conductors such as Sir Charles Mackerras, Gennardi Rozhdestvensky, Sir Andrew Davis, Heinrich Schiff, Sir Neville Marriner, and Paul Daniel.
Her international career continues to gain momentum with concerts in the United States, Canada, South America, Germany, Austria and Spain. Her debut concerts with the Montreal Symphony and Mark Wigglesworth received critical acclaim as did her Argentinean debut at the Teatro Colon with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires.
Natalie is in great demand as a recitalist and appears every year at London’s Wigmore Hall. She has given recitals in Tokyo, Seoul, New York (Lincoln Center) and Vienna and Salzburg. She is an avid chamber musician and each summer takes part in many of the world’s great international festivals, including Cheltenham, Mostly Mozart (London), City of London, Bath, Oxford, Australia, (Perth International Chamber Music Festival), Canada (Vancouver Festival), France (Divonne Festival), Germany (Moritzburg, Heimbach ‘Spannungen’, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Osnabruck, Kronberg), Switzerland (Verbier), the Netherlands (Delft), Italy (Spoletto), Austria (Schubertiade) and Ireland (West Cork Chamber Music Festival). Besides her regular recital partners - Julius Drake, Charles Owen and Kathy Stott - her chamber music collaborations have included Martha Argerich, Ian Bostridge, Melvyn Tan, Imogen Cooper, Stephen Kovacevich, Lars Vogt, Itamar Golan, Steven Isserlis, clarinetists Michael Collins, Sharon Kam and Emma Johnson, oboist Nick Daniels and violinists Priya Mitchell, Pekka Kuusisto and Isabelle Faust. She is also regularly invited to perform with the Belcea, Jerusalem and Takacs quartets as well as the Nash Ensemble.
Natalie records exclusively for EMI Classics UK. Her debut recording, a recital disc of Brahms and Schubert cello sonatas with Charles Owen was released in October 2004 on the EMI 'Classics for Pleasure' imprint and her recording of the Chopin and Rachmaninov Cello Sonatas with Charles Owen was released on 25th September 2006.
Natalie Clein plays on the “Simpson” Guadagnini cello (1777).*
Natalie is the sister of actress Louisa Clein.
[edit] Awards
- BBC Young Musician of the Year (1994)
- Classical Brit Award: Young Artist of the Year (2005)
[edit] Discography
- Duruflé: Requiem (Hyperion, 1994)
- Brahms/Schubert: Cello Sonatas, with Charles Owen, piano (Classics for Pleasure, 2004)
- Chopin/Rachmaninov: Cello Sonatas with Charles Owen, piano (EMI Classics UK, 2006)
