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Earth, Sea, Air: British Music for Cello and Orchestra
gramophone


June 2024
Charlotte Gardner

Proof, if any were ever needed, that the best things come to those who wait.

If one were asked to sum up young British cellist Laura van der Heijden’s career to date, then beyond its consistent story of intelligently musical and technically superb playing, and its top-drawer collaborations, it would be the fact that her mantra appears to have always been, ‘Wait, then do it well’. And here now is the crowning example of that approach: finally her first concerto recording, a full 12 years after winning BBC Young Musician aged 15, six years after her debut recital on Champs Hill (2/18), and two solo recitals into her clearly-now-home relationship with Chandos. It should thus surprise no one that this programme of British music for cello and orchestra is very classy indeed.

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Path to the Moon album review –intriguing and beguiling
The Guardian


February 2024
Erica Jeal

Perfectly curated

William T Horton’s The Path to the Moon is a monochrome image of a ridge winding through space, with vertiginous drops on either side. It’s the inspiration for a programme by the cellist Laura van der Heijden and pianist Jâms Coleman that has its own potent atmosphere, on one hand evoking risk and striving and on the other, the beguilement of moonlight. The result is an intriguing juxtaposition of three major 20th-century sonatas with a handful of songs in which the cello takes the vocal line.

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inventive, beguilingly voiced exploration
gramophone


February 2024
Charlotte Gardner

It’s a special treat to have two of the younger generation’s most interesting artists championing the Walker as its existing discography is so very limited.

Take note of the cover artwork to Laura van der Heijden and Jâms Coleman’s ‘Path to the Moon’, because its image – William T Horton’s print of the same name – was what provided the initial spark for this inventive, beguilingly voiced exploration of ‘works devoted to the moon’s gently alluring, enigmatic and romantic character, and works evoking humankind’s fervent striving for new heights’.

It’s a special treat to have two of the younger generation’s most interesting artists championing the Walker as its existing discography is so very limited. Do look up, if you can, the classily dry, clean-lined recording made by Walker himself with Detroit Symphony principal cellist Italo Babini. Van der Heijden and Coleman are similarly clean, rhythmic and evenly balanced, but with a slightly softer elegance from van der Heijden that’s just as appealing. Notice and enjoy the subtlest ghost of the blues she brings to her voicing in the austere first movement, and their combined tautly hushed, long-lined stillness over the central Sostenuto. Their Debussy has a magically silence-wrapped, lunar quality. In their graceful Britten reading, Coleman’s multicoloured voice is notably compelling in the ‘Elegia’.

‘Gently alluring, enigmatic and romantic’? Well, tick, tick and tick. Hugely recommended.

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Der Mond als Quelle der Sehnsucht
Pizzicato


February 2024
Uwe Krusch

Ein hörenswerter Flug zum Mond

Mit ihren noch nicht einmal 30 Jahren schafft sie einen großen Raum an souverän gespielten Stücken, abwechselnd keck, wehmütig, lyrisch und auch straff geführt. Dabei zeigt sie eine vorbildliche Intonation und auch, dass sie technisch jede Finesse beherrscht. Was sie nicht tut, sie erliegt nicht der Versuchung, zu temperamentvoll und die Musik mit zu saftigem Ton zu buttern. Mitunter entwickelt sie ihr Spiel sogar etwas spröde.

Das Spiel von Jams Coleman zeigt sich nicht nur technisch herausragend. Mit schäumender Energie bei aller Contenance der Tastenbehandlung geben seine Interpretationen den Werken von dieser Seite hier Energie und Pfiff und erzeugen zusammen mit der Cellistin einen hörenswerten Flug zum Mond, sei es in Gedanken, Träumen oder irgendwie auch real.

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Spotlight. A Great Release
Classical Music Daily


February 2024
Geoff Pearce

This is a great release, with fine artists, quite a range of contrasting music, and informative programme notes.

I think this disc will appeal to a very wide section of the listening public. One thing I particularly liked is that the performers do not appear to be recorded with microphones too close, which results in realistic blending, and also a feeling of distance, perhaps reflecting the distant and mysterious qualities of the moonlight.

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Pohádka – Tales from Prague to Budapest
BBC Music Magazine, Classical Music


February 2022
Helen Wallace

big-boned reading with hair-trigger transitions

The starting point for this delicious and distinctive Bohemian programme was Janáček’s Pohádka (1910): too often a make-weight, it’s in fact an 11-minute opera, a musical nutriball of song, dance, poetry and drama. Laura van der Heijden and Jâms Coleman unleash its power in this big-boned reading, with its hair-trigger transitions from dreaming innocence to cataclysm. Janáček’s Violin Sonata (1914) is yet more volatile and stark. In her arrangement, Van der Heijden has replaced the violin’s thrilling screams (its connections to Kát’a Kabanová are strong) for the cello’s warmer, though less idiomatic, embrace; but in the Allegretto’s scything scales and explosive motifs of the Subito, the instrument brings heft and higher-voltage ferocity. Coleman offers tumult and transparency.

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Pohádka: Tales From Prague To Budapest
Gramophone


February 2022
Guy Rickards

an expressive arc travelling from innocence (Pohádka) to the chastened experience (via the Great War) of Janáček’s Sonata.

As a creative concept, it is carried through convincingly. The players clearly share a tangible musical understanding and rapport, and catch Pohádka’s ambivalent quality very neatly (after all, are not all fairy tales child-friendly glosses on darker terrors?). Their technical prowess comes to the fore in Kodály’s Sonata, the two movements of which contain a wealth of expression, albeit with no declared programme. The Mihály Mouvement is a challenge of an even greater kind – the composer was a cellist as well as being a fine conductor and composer – but both players take its formidable demands in their stride.

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A programme focussed on the folk roots of Czech and Hungarian composers
The Strad


February 2022
Janet Banks

Vivid playing and a rapport between duo partners in a delightful programme

Janáček’s Pohádka feels carefree and innocent compared with his Violin Sonata, written a few years later during the First World War. The dialogue between piano and cello in the former work flows easily and van der Heijden’s extrovert playing and warm lyricism make for a delightful performance. The Violin Sonata transcription works well. The emotional intensity is there, and the ferocious glissandos in the third movement sound all the more savage on the cello. The duo demonstrates convincing mastery of the fluctuating moods and tempos of Kodály’s two-movement sonata, with van der Heijden’s well-centred, full-bodied tone sounding especially earthy on the lower strings of the late 17th-century Rugeri cello she plays.

The interesting programming, engaging playing, an empathetic partnership and a convincingly real, immediate sound combine to make this a disc that’s worth seeking out.

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1948: Recording of the month
BBC Music Magazine


March 2018
Daniel Jaffé

An imaginative and impressive debut

Laura van der Heijden dazzels in both rare and well-known cello sonatas from the Soviet era, says Daniel Jaffé

From the first, richly resinous tone of the cello solo that opens Prokofiev’s Sonata, one senses that this album will be a treat. There are dozens of recordings of that work, several of them extremely good. Laura van der Heijden, winner of 2012’s BBC Young Musician competition, now joins forces with Russian pianist Petr Limonov in a performance that can hold its own, and on an album that is most imaginatively programmed.

In writing his Cello Sonata for that great musician, Prokofiev also had the example of his old friend Myaskovsky, whose gently melancholic Second Sonata was also written for Rostropovich in the very year of Myaskovsky’s and Prokofiev’s disgrace. Yet, as these heart-felt and compelling performances by Van der Heijden and Limonov demonstrate, these are not cowed and dutifully conservative works. The Prokofiev, both melodious and neo-classical in form and proportion – like his Second Violin Sonata – is full of coulours and subtle detail which become more apparent over many hearings, each appearing to reveal new emotional vistas.

Performance *****
Recording *****

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Recommended Recording
The Strad


March 2018
Peter Quantrill

Outstanding, original Russian recital from a BBC Young Musician

If you expect the shadow of Rostropovich to fall heavily over this repertoire, as you might, then you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Nineteen years of age when she made this surprisingly appealing musical portrait of postwar Russia, Laura van der Heijden plays with a winning and refreshing determination to make this music dance and sparkle.

Van der Heijden uses plenty of right elbow in the scherzos of both the Prokofiev and the anachronistic character pieces of Shaporin, but there is also some lovely portamento to be savoured, especially in the burgeoning first melody of Mysaskovsky’s Sonata which, in the hands of the 2012 BBC Young Musician winner, opens like a flower after a long winter. It’s her positive lyric impulse that puts a spring in the step of the slightly meandering stretches of both sonatas. This is much more than a ‘promising’ debut album.

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Soulful Selection of Work under Stalin
The Guardian


January 2018
Erica Jeal

Much to say...

Nearly six years after winning the BBC young musician of the year, cellist Laura van der Heijden makes her recording debut with an all-Russian disc that shows her to be, at 20, already a thoughtful artist with much to say.

Van der Heijden and pianist Petr Limonov bring to all a perfectly judged weight, the cello singing out long lines of sustained intensity that get to the heart of this soulful music.

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Van der Heijden kan tevreden zijn over haar eersteling
de Volkskrant


March 2018
Biëlla Luttmer

Van der Heijden, zes jaar geleden gekozen tot BBC Young Musician of the Year, kan tevreden zijn over haar eersteling. In haar beloftevolle, karakteristieke toon klinkt de leeftijd van haar eeuwenoude instrument door, maar ook de onstuimige passie van een jonge rasmuzikante voor haar vak.

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Laura Van Der Heijden’s New CD Tops Among Crowded Cello Releases
La Scena


January 2018
Norman Lebrecht

It just got a whole load tougher out there for young cellists.

Album of the week is, outstandingly, a record debut by BBC Young Musician winner Laura Van Der Heijden with pianist Petr Limonov (Champs Hill ****). Themed to the year 1948, when Stalin launched his assault on musicians, it presents starkly contrasting sonatas by Prokofiev and Miaskovsky, buttressed by lighter works of Yuri Shaporin and the 19th century Anatoly Liadov. Van Der Heijden refuses to prettify the grim circumstances in her playing, though she can do tender when required. These are serious, adult interpretations, properly considered and ready to contend with the best in the field.

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RUSSISCHE WERKEN VOOR CELLO EN PIANO
Musicalifeiten


January 2018
Jan de Kruijff

Een fijn, veelbelovend debuut

Maar met ontzag en respect moet worden vastgesteld dat Laura van der Heyden zich niet hoeft te schamen voor haar beroemde collega’s, zoals bij vluchtig vergelijken blijkt. Vol zelfvertrouwen en beschikkend over een waar arsenaal aan techniek laat ze haar cello mooi fraserend en articulerend zingen, spreken en trillen met een goed gedoseerde intensiteit en steeds de essentie van de werken onthullend. Daarvoor heeft ze de beschikking over een Joseph Hill instrument uit 1780. Gelukkig begeleidt Petr Limonov, die eerder Nicola Benedetti begeleidde in bewerkingen van werken van Brahms, Chopin, Monti (Decca 478.5338), van Kabalevsky, Prokofiev (Onyx ONYX 4122) en van Schnittke (Onyx ONYX 4180) en zo zijn sporen verdiende op ideale wijze. Wat een fijn, veelbelovend debuut.

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Russian Works for Cello and Piano
Gramophone


January 2018
Richard Bratby

One to live with.

Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata begins with a melody low on the C string, and no expression markings: just the instruction piena voce (full voice). So it’s hard to explain exactly why Laura van der Heijden makes it sound and feel quite so right. Perhaps it’s because she doesn’t strive for effect. Van der Heijden’s tone is handsome, and her vibrato opens out to inflect the top of the phrase before the line slips without fuss beneath the piano’s answering melody. There’s a naturalness about her approach, as well as a certain earnestness – at any rate, she sounds like she takes the piece seriously.

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Great debut album from 2012 BBC Young Musician of the Year!
iClassical.co.uk


February 2018
iClassical.co.uk

1948 – Russian Works for Cello & Piano

Prokofiev’s sonata was written for the great soviet cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. There are many fine recordings of this work on the market already including those by Truls Mørk & Lars Vogt, Pieter Wispelwey & Dejan Lazic and Rostropovich himself. However from the first notes of this performance it becomes clear that this is going to be a performance well worth listening to. These two artists bring out all of the colours in this melodious, neoclassical work as well as the subtle details and were clearly in the zone for this rather special performance. We also get a spontaneous and highly engaging account of the Miaskovsky work in which Laura is sensitively supported by Limonov.

iClassical rating: * * * * *

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JANUARY 2018 – CD of the MONTH – Laura van der Heijden’s debut CD “1948”
Colchester Classics


January 2018
Colchester Classics

The winner of the BBC Young Musician Competition in 2012, Laura van der Heijden makes her debut recording with music of the Soviet era, inspired by her teachers, and by a deep appreciation of “the immense value of great art, music, and literature in Russian-speaking countries….[I] discovered the link which exists between the ‘Russian soul’ and the spiritual virtue of art”. Laura also writes: “The pieces on this album are in many ways a response to the decree issued by the communist party on the 10th of February 1948, which further restricted composers’ freedom of expression”.

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