Anneleen Lenaerts

Harpist Anneleen Lenaerts ranks among the foremost interpreters of her instrument today. She maintains an active schedule both in recital and as a concerto soloist while serving as principal harpist of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Born in the Limburg town of Peer, Belgium, on April 26, 1987, Lenaerts began her studies with Lieve Robbroeckx and launched a remarkable sequence of 23 competition victories in 1997. She pursued formal training at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where her curriculum encompassed harmony, counterpoint, and fugue, before advancing to the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris to work with Isabelle Perrin.

In 2005 she received two significant honors for emerging musicians: the prize awarded by the Flemish government of Belgium and the International Cultural Prize for Youth presented by the regional authorities of Upper and Lower Normandy. These distinctions brought further scholarships and awards, after which she completed her studies under Jana Boukova.

By the close of the 2000s she had begun appearing with leading ensembles, among them the Brussels Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra. Her solo engagements have taken her to prestigious halls such as Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Berliner Philharmonie.

In 2010 Lenaerts joined both the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera as principal harpist. She maintains a duo partnership with clarinetist Dionysos Grammenos and holds a teaching position at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, as well as a continuing faculty appointment at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado.

Early in the 2010s she released an album of harp transcriptions of Chopin and Liszt on the Aliud label. Warner Classics signed her exclusively in 2015, initiating a series of harp concerto recordings with the Brussels Philharmonic. Her 2019 disc devoted to Nino Rota’s works for harp brought her first Opus Klassik Award.