Annelien Van Wauwe (born 1987) is a Belgian clarinetist who performs internationally as a soloist. She was educated by Sabine Meyer and other internationally known teachers. She has won numerous international competitions and performs with top international orchestras and as a sought-after soloist at international festivals, but is also active in chamber music with her own ensemble. Several works have been composed especially for her.[1][2]
She is also a principal teacher for historical and modern clarinet at the Royal Conservatory Antwerp.[3][4] She lives in Berlin.
In 2018, she was appointed lecturer for historical and modern clarinet at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp (part of the Artesis Hogeschool Antwerpen).[4]
She is also active in the field of chamber music and was one of the co-founders of the Brussels chamber music ensemble Carousel in 2018.[7] Van Wauwe is an ambitious yoga enthusiast. She believes that her yoga exercises have a "positive influence on her clarinet playing". Her practice of the discipline led to a specially commissioned concerto based on breathing and meditation by composer Wim Henderickx.[8] It was co-commissioned by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust and BBC Radio 3.[8] This clarinet concerto called SUTRA "will be a spiritual meditation in which extreme virtuosity is coupled with an intense musical experience. Passages of peace, meditation and silence are combined with violent outbursts."[9][10]
Awards
2004: 1st prize of the international Marco Fiorindo competition in Turin[2]
The 2012 ARD competition prize was decisive for her international career.[4]
Instruments
Van Wauwe plays Vintage clarinets in B♭ and A by Buffet Crampon,[3] optimized by a German clarinet maker (low E improvement added[17]). She performs the Mozart Concerto, like many solo clarinetists today, on a modern basset clarinet, a Prestige by Buffet Crampon.[18]
Recordings
In 2015, Van Wauwe released a CD of clarinet sonatas by Mieczysław Weinberg and Sergei Prokofiev, Weinberg-Prokofiev, with the pianist Lucas Blondeel,[19] and in 2019 the CD Belle époque with the Orchestre National de Lille and its music director Alexandre Bloch was released, which includes works by Claude Debussy, Manfred Trojahn, Gabriel Pierné, Johannes Brahms and Charles-Marie Widor.[20] Mark Pullinger of Gramophone, in his review of Belle époque, praises the artist for the "great sensitivity to her phrasing" and emphasizes the first recording of Trojahn's Rhapsody, the Caprice of which he calls a "high-wire act for the soloist, which Van Wauwe navigates with aplomb".[21] Another reviewer, Stuart Sillitoe of MusicWeb International, describes Van Wauwe as a "formidable clarinettist", and praises the playing on the entire disc. He characterizes her performance of Debussy's Première Rhapsodie as "superb", so good as now be his "favourite" over all of his other recordings of the work.[22] In 2022, she recorded Mozart's masterpiece for clarinet, the Concerto in A major K622, which she co-recorded with the world premiere of the Concerto Sutra by Belgian composer Wim Henderickx (April 2022, Pentatone).
Notes
^The 1st and 3rd prize were not awarded, instead the 2nd prize was awarded three times.