Sabine Meyer
Clarinet
Sabine Meyer is one of the world’s most renowned instrumental soloists. It is partly due to her that the clarinet, a solo instrument previously underestimated, recaptured the attention of the concert platform.
Born in Crailsheim, she studied with Otto Hermann in Stuttgart and Hans Deinzer in Hanover, then embarked on a career as an orchestral musician and became member of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. This was followed by an engagement as solo clarinettist at the Berlin Philharmonic which she abandoned, as she was more and more in demand as a soloist. For almost a quarter of a century, numerous concerts and broadcast engagements led her to all musical centres of Europe as well as to Brazil, Israel, Canada, Africa and Australia, and, for twenty years, equally regularly to Japan and the USA.
Sabine Meyer has been a much-celebrated soloist with numerous orchestras internationally. She has given guest performances with all the top-level orchestras in Germany and has been engaged by the world’s leading orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, the Orchestra of Suisse Romande, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Broadcast Orchestras of Vienna, Basel, Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as well as numerous additional ensembles.
Sabine Meyer is particularly interested in the field of chamber music, where she has formed many long-lasting collaborations. She has explored a wide range of chamber repertoire with such colleagues as Heinrich Schiff, Gidon Kremer, Oleg Maisenberg, Leif Ove Andsnes, Fazil Say, Juliane Banse, the Hagen Quartet and the Tokyo String Quartet.
In 1983 she founded the “Trio di Clarone” together with her husband Reiner Wehle and her brother Wolfgang Meyer. The repertoire of this ensemble includes some almost forgotten compositions of Mozart and many contemporary works. In recent years, the trio’s repertoire has been further extended by such innovative projects as their appearances with the jazz clarinet soloist Michael Riessler. After the successful crossover project “Bach 2000” (recorded by EMI), they now include in their programming “Paris mecanique” featuring music from 1920s Paris.
In 1988 Sabine Meyer founded the ”Bläserensemble Sabine Meyer” in which leading wind players from around the world perform together. The ensemble gives regular concerts in Germany and abroad with repertoire ranging from classic to avant-garde. In the mixed formation “Ensemble Collage”, string colleagues such as Benjamin Schmid, Wolfram Christ and Clemens Hagen meet Sabine Meyer and her wind player colleagues.
Both as a soloist and chamber musician, Sabine Meyer is a prominent champion for contemporary music – works by Jean Françaix, Edison Denissov, Harald Genzmer, Toshio Hosokawa, Niccolo Castiglioni, Manfred Trojahn, Aribert Reimann and numerous further composers have been dedicated to her. In 2008 she performed the world premiere of the Concerto for two Clarinets by Peter Eötvös, with her brother Wolfgang Meyer. For 2013 Jörg Widmann will write a double concerto, again for Sabine and Wolfgang Meyer.
Sabine Meyer gives regular masterclasses in Germany, Italy, Austria, Japan and the USA and has been appointed to a professorship at the Hochschule für Musik in Lübeck in 1993.
Sabine Meyer has made numerous recordings in the recent years, on EMI Classics. Recorded repertoire varies from pre-classical to contemporary compositions and includes all important solo concerti and chamber music pieces for clarinet. She has received an Echo Prize seven times, four of them as Instrumentalist of the Year. Among the recordings which have received an Echo award are the Clarinet Concerti of Johann and Carl Starnitz, the new recording of the Mozart Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado as well as works of Weber, Mendelssohn and Baermann with the Academy of St.Martin in the Fields.
In her three most recent CDs, all released in 2007, Sabine Meyer appears alongside colleagues: French duo repertoire with Oleg Maisenberg, works of Nielsen (Concerti and chamber music) with Emmanuel Pahud and, with her student Julian Biss, a CD with Solo and Double Concerti of Spohr and Krommer.
Sabine Meyer received eight “Echo Klassik awards”, is laureate of the “Niedersachsen Prize” as well as of the “Brahms Prize” by the Brahms Association Schleswig Holstein (2001) and member of the “Academy of Arts Hamburg”. In 2007 she was awarded the main prize of the “Praetorius Music Prize Niedersachsen 2007”, 2010 she received the decoration „Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres“ from the French government.
SEASON 2010/2011
