Laura van der Heijden

Although British cellist Laura van der Heijden (born in 1997 in West Sussex, England) won the BBC Young Musician competition in 2012, it was six years before she finally released her debut album, 1948. That wait is typical of the patient approach van der Heijden has adopted to developing her prodigious talent, and of her willingness to take the road less traveled. 1948 avoided mainstream repertoire by focusing on how political oppression affected the Russian composers Prokofiev, Shaporin, and Myaskovsky in the postwar period. In the BBC Young Musician final, van der Heijden spurned the obvious by performing William Walton’s rarely heard Cello Concerto, and as an undergraduate she elected to study at Cambridge University, avoiding the standard pathway of a specialist music school. Her singularly intelligent, heartfelt performances eventually drew major-label interest, and in 2021 she signed an exclusive contract with Chandos Records.