Anneleen Lenaerts

The Belgian harpist Anneleen Lenaerts received her first lessons from Lieve Robbroeckx and went on to participate in numerous masterclasses with leading professors. She completed her studies at the conservatoires of Brussels and of Paris, where in 2008 she received her Master’s Diploma with the highest distinction. She went on to refine her skills with Isabelle Perrin at the Cours de Perfectionnement at the École Normale de Musique de Paris.

Along with harp, Anneleen Lenaerts studied harmony, counterpoint and fugue in Brussels. She has received important grants and has won more than twenty prizes in international harp competitions, including first prize at the famous Concours de harpe Lily Laskine (2005). Since 2011 Anneleen Lenaerts has been harpist in the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, and since 2014 she has been a member of the Vienna Philharmonic. 

As an internationally sought-after soloist she performs with orchestras such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg, the Bruckner Orchestra in Linz, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra, the Belgian National Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and appears as a guest at numerous prestigious international concert halls and festivals, among them Carnegie Hall, the Wigmore Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Graz Musikverein, the Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Athens Megaron and BOZAR in Brussels; and at the Salzburg Festival, Rheingau Musik Festival, the Dresden Music Festival, the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, the Moritzburg Festival and the Aspen Music Festival. Her solo performances have been recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 3, France Musique and Deutschlandfunk, among others. 

As an exclusive recording artist with Warner Classics Anneleen Lenaerts regularly records solo albums. Her current CD Vienna Stories features harp arrangements of famous works by Dvořák, Smetana, Wagner, Zabel, Liszt, Richard Strauss and Johann Strauss. Her album Nino Rota. Works for Harp (2019) with the Brussels Philharmonic under the direction of Adrien Perruchon was awarded an OPUS Klassik award. She has previously recorded works by Schumann and Schubert with the clarinettist Dionysis Grammenos, and the album Harp Concertos, on which she performed Reinhold Glière’s harp concerto and her own version of the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo, along with a harp concerto by her fellow-countryman Joseph Jongen. 

Anneleen Lenaerts teaches at the Conservatorium Maastricht and is a faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival and School.