Laura van der Heijden
Laura van der Heijden is recognised as “a shining role model to musicians of her generation” (The Guardian). Winner of the 2025 Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award and 2024 Critics’ Circle Instrumentalist Award, she captivates audiences with her perceptive interpretations, imaginative programming and engaging stage presence.
Since winning BBC Young Musician in 2012, aged fifteen, Laura has built a thriving international career, performing with leading orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. She has worked with distinguished conductors including the late Sir Andrew Davis, Alpesh Chauhan, Nick Collon, Richard Egarr, Gemma New and Karl-Heinz Steffens, and appeared at the BBC Proms and the inaugural BBC Proms Australia.
A sought-after chamber musician, Laura is a member of the critically acclaimed Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective and regularly collaborates with musicians including Timothy Ridout, Max Baillie, Misha Mullov-Abbado and Hélène Clément, alongside the Doric, Redon and Brodsky Quartets. Recent recital appearances include Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw, Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal and Kissinger Sommer.
Laura’s 2018 début album with Chandos, 1948, won the Edison Klassiek Award and BBC Music Magazine’s Newcomer of the Year Award. Her growing discography also includes Pohádka: Tales from Prague to Budapest (2022), Path to the Moon (2024) and Lumière (November 2026), all recorded with pianist Jâms Coleman; and Mozart: Piano Quartets (2023), with Francesca Dego, Timothy Ridout and Federico Colli. Her acclaimed 2024 Chandos concerto album, Earth, Sea, Air, features the première recording of Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s work, alongside Bridge’s Oration and Walton’s Cello Concerto. Laura gave the work’s world première with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 2023, reprising it at the 2024 BBC Proms.
Laura performs on a late-seventeenth-century cello by Francesco Ruggieri of Cremona, generously loaned from a private collection.
Faculties / departments: Strings
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