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. Her playing has been praised for its “astonishing range of colours and … wide variety of expressive styles” (Gramophone Magazine).
She records regularly for Hyperion, and has recorded the two Cello Concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns as well as Bloch’s Schelomo and Bruch’s Kol Nidrei with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra to great critical acclaim. A solo disc with works by Bloch, Ligeti and Dallapiccola was released on 27 January 2017 and was awarded the Diapason d’Or, and her latest recital recording of works by Rebecca Clarke, Frank Bridge and Vaughan Williams with Christian Ihle Hadland was released in January 2019. She has previously released 3 discs for EMI.
Her performances have taken Natalie Clein to orchestras including the Philharmonia, Hallé, Bournemouth Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Montreal Symphony, Orchestre National de Lyon, New Zealand Symphony and Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires. She has performed with conductors including Sir Mark Elder, Sir Roger Norrington, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Leonard Slatkin, Stéphane Denève and Heinrich Schiff and regularly collaborates with artists including Sergio Tiempo, Håvard Gimse, Anthony Marwood and Leif Ove Andsnes.
A keen recital and chamber performer, she has recently performed Bach’s Complete Cello Suites in London, Southampton and Oxford. With a keen curatorial eye, Natalie Clein also programmed a series of four concerts for BBC Radio 3 at LSO St Luke’s, as well as in her capacity as Artist in Residence at Oxford University. She is the proud artistic director of her own chamber music festival in Purbeck, Dorset.
She regularly works with contemporary composers such as Thomas Larcher, Brian Elias and Dobrinka Tabakova and has also curated and been involved in cross-disciplinary projects with the dancer Carlos Acosta, writer Jeanette Winterson and director Deborah Warner amongst others.
In 2015, Natalie Clein was appointed Artist in Residence and Director of Musical Performance at Oxford University for 4 years, and in 2018 she was appointed Professor of Cello at the Rostock Academy of Music in Germany.
Born in the United Kingdom, Natalie came to widespread attention at the age of sixteen when she won both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and the Eurovision Competition for Young Musicians in Warsaw. As a student she was awarded the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Scholarship by the Royal College of Music. She completed her studies with Heinrich Schiff in Vienna. Natalie is a Professor at the Royal College of Music London and Music Academy Rostock. She plays the ‘Simpson’ Guadagnini cello of 1777.