Big Noise

It's more than a decade since Natalie Clein won BBC Young Musician of the Year with a performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto, but only now has she decide to record it.

'Growing up and away from the Young Musician competition has been a creative ongoing process for me,' she told Muso. 'I'm more interested in the overview now, in the scope of a piece, and less in the tiny details.'

She feels the piece deserves its massive popularity: 'The score is one of Elgar's most beautiful. I think it shows the very best of English emotion.'

Clein returned to the concert scene in 2002 after a five-year sabbatical following the BBC Young Musician competition. Now 30, she has a successful concert and recording career behind her and has performed as a soloist with most of the UK's major orchestras and a number of international ensembles.

She is an avid chamber musician and besides her regular recital partners - Julius Drake, Charles Owen and Kathryn Stott - she has collaborated with the likes of Martha Argerich, Ian Bostridge, Melvyn Tan, Lars Vogt, the Takacs Quartet and the Nash Ensemble.

In 2004 she signed an exclusive recording contract with EMI Classics and her debut recording, a recital disc of Brahms and Schubert cello sonatas with Charles Owen, was released in October that year. A further recording, of the Chopin and Rachmaninov Cello Sonatas, followed in September 2006.

Elgar – Cello Concerto in E minor
EMI Classics, 2007

The Romantic Cello (Chopin/Rachmaninov Cello Sonatas)
EMI Classics, 2006

Brahms – Cello Sonatas Nos 1&2/Schubert – Arpeggione Sonata
EMI Classics, 2004

www.natalieclein.com

www.emiclassics.com