Having released her first album, Pohádka, on Chandos Records in February 2022, Laura van der Heijden has emerged as one of the leading cellists of her generation, captivating audiences and critics alike with her deeply perceptive interpretations and engaging stage presence. In prestigious concert halls the world over, appearing under conductors including Sir Andrew Davis, Kirill Karabits, Karl-Heinz Steffens, Ryan Wigglesworth, and Alpesh Chauhan, she has performed with such leading orchestras as the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, European Union Chamber Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, as well as the BBC Concert Orchestra at the 2018 BBC Proms and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in the opening concert of the inaugural BBC Proms Australia. She can already look back on a number of exceptional achievements, among them being declared the winner, aged fifteen, of the BBC Young Musician competition. Her 2018 début album, 1948, with the pianist Petr Limonov, featuring Russian music for cello and piano, won the 2018 Edison Klassiek Award and the 2019 BBC Music Magazine Newcomer Award. Also a passionate chamber musician, she has collaborated with the likes of Katya Apekisheva, Max Baillie, Jâms Coleman, Federico Colli, Matthew McDonald, Tom Poster, Timothy Ridout, and Elena Urioste, and has given recitals at the Wigmore Hall, West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Beverley Chamber Music Festival, Harrogate International Festival, Cheltenham Festival, Music in the Round, Oxford Lieder, and Miesbach Kammermusik Festival, Germany. As a key member of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, an Associate Ensemble at Wigmore Hall, she features on all the albums the Ensemble has released to date on Chandos Records, and joined its début tour of the US, in 2023. Laura van der Heijden plays a late-seventeenth-century cello by Francesco Ruggieri, of Cremona, on generous loan from a private collection. www.lauravanderheijden.uk