Sabine Meyer

Sabine Meyer is one of the world’s most renowned instrumental soloists. It is partly due to her that the clarinet, a solo instrument previously underestimated, recaptured the attention of the concert platform. Born in Crailsheim, she studied with Otto Hermann in Stuttgart and Hans Deinzer in Hanover, then embarked on a career as an orchestral musician and became member of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. This was followed by an engagement as solo clarinettist at the Berliner Philharmoniker which she abandoned, as she was more and more in demand as a soloist. For more than 30 years, numerous concerts led her to all musical centres of Europe, to North America, Japan and China and Australia. 

Sabine Meyer has been a much-celebrated soloist with more than three hundred orchestras internationally. She has given guest performances with all the top-level orchestras in Germany and has been engaged by the world’s leading orchestras such as the Wiener Philharmoniker, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Radio Orchestras of Vienna, Basel, Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as well as numerous additional ensembles. In 2018 Sabine Meyer was artist in residence at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival with 19 concerts showing all her facets as artist.

Sabine Meyer is particularly interested in the field of chamber music, where she has formed many long-lasting collaborations. Her chamber music partners are colleagues such as Christiane Karg, Martin Helmchen, Daniel Müller-Schott, Bertrand Chamayou, Nils
Mönkemeyer, the Armida, the Modigliani and the Schumann Quartet. Her main chamber music ensemble was the “Trio di Clarone”; with husband Reiner Wehle and brother Wolfgang Meyer she played more than 500 concerts from 1983 until 2018. The repertoire included some almost forgotten compositions by Mozart and many contemporary works. The trio’s repertoire has been extended further by several innovative projects with the jazz clarinettist Michael Riessler.

Her latest new chamber music project brings her together with the saxophone quintet “Alliage”; newly arranged music by Stravinsky and Dukas shows brilliant colours of the combination of these instruments.

Sabine Meyer is a prominent champion for contemporary music – works by Jean Françaix, Edison Denissov, Toshio Hosokawa, Niccolò Castiglioni, Manfred Trojahn, Aribert Reimann and Peter Eötvös were written for her. In 2015 she premiered a concerto by Márton Illés at the Lucerne Festival. 

 
Sabine Meyer has made numerous recordings for EMI Classics (now Warner Classics); she also recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Sony and CAvi-music. The recorded repertoire varies from pre-classical to contemporary compositions and includes all important pieces for clarinet. For Sony she recorded Mozart arias, arranged for clarinet, a trio CD with Nils Mönkemeyer and William Youn and recently the “Fantasia” together with the Alliage Quintet.

Sabine Meyer received eight “Echo Classic Awards” and is a member of the “Academy of Arts Hamburg”. In 2010 she received the decoration „Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres“ from the French government. 

Sabine Meyer has been appointed to a professorship at the Hochschule für Musik in Lübeck in 1993.