Annelien Van Wauwe

Annelien Van Wauwe (born 1987) is a Belgian clarinetist who performs internationally as a soloist. She studied with 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. She is also a principal teacher for historical and modern clarinet at the Royal Conservatory Antwerp. She lives in Mechelen, Belgien.

Education Van Wauwe was born in Hamme, Belgium. She began playing the clarinet at the age of 8. After completing secondary school in 2004, she began her training as a professional clarinetist at the Musikhochschule Lübeck with Sabine Meyer at the age of 17. After graduating there, she continued her education at the Paris Conservatory for music and dance with Pascal Moraguès in 2009 and from January 2010 at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Alessandro Carbonare and then at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin with Ralf Forster, solo-clarinetist of Konzerthausorchester Berlin and Wenzel Fuchs and completed a master class in Los Angeles with Yehuda Gilad. In the field of historical performance practice, she studied classical clarinet at the Paris Conservatory with and at the Musikhochschule Trossingen with Ernst Schlader. 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. It was co-commissioned by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust and BBC Radio 3.

Educational activity Van Wauwe regularly gives masterclasses and teaches at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. She is a juror at international music competitions.

Awards 2004: 1st prize of the international Marco Fiorindo competition in Turin 2012: 1st prize of the sixth edition of the International Audi Mozart Competition in Rovereto 2015: Award of the VRT cultural channel of the public-law Flemish broadcaster Radio Klara 2018: Prize of the Borletti-Buitoni Foundation 2020: Opus Klassik – Prize as a young artist (clarinet) in Berlin The 2012 ARD competition prize was decisive for her international career. ). She performs the Mozart Concerto, like many solo clarinetists today, on a modern basset clarinet, a Prestige by Buffet Crampon.

Recordings In 2015, Van Wauwe released a CD of clarinet sonatas by Mieczysław Weinberg and Sergei Prokofiev, Weinberg-Prokofiev, with the pianist Lucas Blondeel, 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. 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". 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. 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).

Personal Annelien Van Wauwe resides in Mechelen, Belgium.