Born in Frankfurt am Main in 1999, cellist Annabel Hauk is a Classic FM Rising Star and performs internationally as a soloist and chamber musician. She began playing the cello at the age of five, studying with Erik Richter and István Várdai at the Feuermann Conservatory of the Kronberg Academy. She completed her Bachelor’s degree at the New England Conservatory in Boston with Prof. Laurence Lesser and graduated with distinction from the Mozarteum University Salzburg in 2025, where she studied with Prof. Giovanni Gnocchi. She is a first-prize winner of the “Tachezi Special Prize” at the Enrico Mainardi Competition at the Mozarteum.
Concert Life
Annabel Hauk has appeared at major festivals such as the Rheingau Music Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Sandstein Festival, and the Rising Stars Series of the PyeongChang Music Festival in South Korea. She has performed duo recitals in Boston’s Jordan Hall, at the Neue Galerie New York, for the Schumann Society Frankfurt, at Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth, at Villa Senar/Rachmaninoff in Switzerland, for BASF Ludwigshafen, and for Jeunesse Musicales in Austria. With her duo partners Martin Nöbauer and Yu Nitahara, she has also recorded for SWR and BR.
Solo Performances
Annabel Hauk has appeared as a soloist with the Kurpfälzisches Kammerorchester under Paul Meyer, the Philharmonie Baden-Baden, the Philharmonisches Orchester Trier, and I Musici di Parma. In the current season, she will perform with the Göttinger Symphonieorchester under Nicolas Milton and at the Weilburg Palace Concerts with the Rheinische Philharmonie.
Chamber Music
A passionate chamber musician, Hauk has been invited to festivals such as Chamber Music Connects the World at the Kronberg Academy, where she performed alongside Gidon Kremer, Christian Tetzlaff and Jörg Widmann. Additional chamber music engagements include the Radebeul Festival with Albrecht Menzel and Fedor Rudin, performances with Alexander Melnikov and Boris Garlitsky as a scholarship holder of Villa Musica Rheinland-Pfalz, and concerts with Meesun Hong-Coleman at l’Auditori Barcelona. In the United States, she won the Honors Competition at the New England Conservatory and the International Enkor Competition with the Tempest String Quartet. She was subsequently invited to the Perlman Music Program on Shelter Island, New York, where she performed with Itzhak Perlman and worked with Donald Weilerstein, Roger Tapping, and Merry Peckham.
Masterclasses
Annabel Hauk has participated in numerous masterclasses, including the PyeongChang Music Festival in South Korea with Hans Jensen and Lluis Claret, as well as the Kronberg Academy Festival, where she worked with Lynn Harrell, Gary Hoffman, and Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt. Additional artistic inspiration came from Vilde Frang and Yura Lee at Mit Musik Miteinander, and from Jens Peter Maintz, Bernard Greenhouse, Jerome Pernoo, Reinhard Latzko, Wolfgang Böttcher, Torleif Thedéen, Vladimir Perlin, Joshua Epstein, and Götz Teutsch.
Scholarships
Hauk has been a recipient of the Presidential Distinction Award of the New England Conservatory, the Gerd Bucerius Scholarship of the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, the Willy Robert Pitzer Foundation, and the Erasmus Society. She is currently supported by Pirastro Strings, the Peter Pirazzi Stiftung, and the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, which has provided her since 2020 with a cello labeled “Gia. Bapt. Grancino … Milano 169?” from the German Musical Instrument Fund.
Since October 2025, Annabel Hauk is an academist in the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.
