About this Artist

Winner of the 2012 BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition, LAURA VAN DER HEIJDEN has been making a name for herself as a very special emerging talent, captivating audiences and critics alike with her imaginative interpretations and probing musicianship. 

2018 marked the global release of Laura’s critically acclaimed debut album 1948, featuring Russian music for cello and piano with pianist Petr Limonov. It won the 2018 Edison Klassiek Award, broadcast live on national TV in the Netherlands. The CD has been hailed as a “dazzling, imaginative, and impressive” debut recording.

Last season’s highlights included a recital with Fazil Say at Zürich Tonhalle, a performance of Schumann’s cello concerto with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, a U.K. tour with IMS Prussia Cove, as well as her debut with the Argovia Philharmonic, and at Wigmore Hall in a BBC lunchtime recital.

Laura is in her final year studying for her bachelor’s degree in music at St. John’s College, Cambridge, while also maintaining a busy concert diary. The 2018/19 season sees Laura give her debut in Japan with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and at the Musashino Cultural Foundation, in Italy with the London Mozart Players, in the U.K. with the Hallé Orchestra under Karl-Heinz Steffens, and in Ireland at West Cork Chamber Music Festival.

Laura plays a late 17th-century cello by Francesco Rugeri of Cremona, on kind loan from a private collection. She is an Ambassador for both the Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts and Brighton Youth Orchestra.