Lucie Horsch

Recorder player Lucie Horsch is a sensation and a prodigy, appearing in national and international venues beginning in her early teens. By her early twenties, Horsch had already released three albums on the major Decca label. Horsch was born in Amsterdam in 1999. Both of her parents are musicians; her father is a principal cellist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Horsch, however, liked the sound of the recorder and decided on a career playing the instrument when she was five. She began taking lessons in Amsterdam, and when she was nine, she made a solo appearance at an outdoor children’s concert on the city’s Prinsengracht canal. Continuing to progress rapidly, she enrolled at the Amsterdam Conservatory’s youth Sweelinck Academy program in 2011, studying piano as well as recorder. Horsch was featured in 2013 on the nationally broadcast Dutch television program The Evening of the Young Musician and was voted the top young musician in the Netherlands by viewers. That led to an appearance the following year at Eurovision Young Musicians, a classical competition associated with the popular Eurovision Song Contest, in Cologne, Germany. Horsch enrolled at the Amsterdam Conservatory, where she continued to study recorder and piano and also began voice classes. A Concertgebouw Young Talent Award in 2016 led to her signing to Decca and to the release of her debut album, Vivaldi, featuring the composer’s difficult flute concertos in 2016; the album won the Edison Klassiek award, the Netherlands’ most important recording-industry award, for best debut album. Horsch has appeared with various major orchestras, including the Residentie Orkest of The Hague, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. In 2019, she released the album Baroque Journey with Britain’s Academy of Ancient Music and violinist/leader Bojan Čičić, featuring concertos by Giuseppe Sammartini, Bach, and Handel. Horsch received the prestigious Nederlandse Muziekprijs in 2020. She returned with the album Origins, featuring a wide range of vernacular-inspired material from Bartók to Charlie Parker, in 2022. ~ James Manheim