Season Schedule

NATALIE CLEIN'S BIO

British cellist Natalie Clein has built a distinguished career, regularly performing at major venues and with orchestras worldwide. She is an exclusive recording artist 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 in January of 2017. She has previously released 3 discs for EMI.

Last season, Natalie Clein toured the UK with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and Libor Peöek, and appeared with the Orchestre National d’ILe de France and the Recreation Orchestra Graz with Michael Hofstetter. She also performed as part of the “Cello Unwrapped Series” at London’s Kings Place.

Her 2015-16 season started with a performance of Bloch’s Schelomo with the Orkiestra Symfoniczna NFM and Benjamin Shwartz in Wroclaw, and further highlights included a return to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales to perform Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1, a recital at the Wigmore Hall with Christian Ihle Hadland and performances at the Stavanger Chamber Music Festival in Norway.

Highlights of the 2014-15 season included the world premiere of Sir John Tavener’s Flood of Beauty at the Barbican Centre with the Britten Sinfonia, concerts with the Recreation Orchestra Graz, as well as tours with the Royal Philharmonic and St Petersburg Symphony Orchestras. Other recent performances have taken Natalie to orchestras including the Philharmonia, Hallé, Bournemouth Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Orchestre National de Lyon, New Zealand Symphony and Orquesta Filarmönica de Buenos Aires. She has performed with conductors including Sir Mark Elder, Sir Roger Norrington, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Leonard Slatkin and Heinrich Schiff.

A keen recital and chamber performer, she has recently performed Bach’s Complete Cello Suites in London, Southampton and Oxford; and has curated a series of four concerts for BBC Radio 3 at LSO St Luke’s. She regularly collaborates with artists including Sergio Tiempo, Håvard Gimse, Anthony Marwood and Leif Ove Andsnes. She has also worked with Martha Argerich, Ian Bostridge, Simon Keenlyside, Imogen Cooper, Lars Vogt, Isabelle Faust, and is the proud artistic director of her own chamber music festival in Purbeck, Dorset.

She regularly works with contemporary composers such as Thomas Larcher and Brian Elias 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, taking a leading role in concert programming, in developing new artistic projects, and in introducing new modes of teaching. A Bach project began in the autumn of 2016, along with visits from a number of Leading contemporary composers.

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. 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. She plays the ‘Simpson’ Guadagnini cello of 1777.