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“Here we have exemplary modern cello playing, which recognizes baroque stylistic ideas without making a fetish of them, [with] steady rhythm, pure intonation, a clean start to each note, instrumental virtuosity and beauty of sound.”
“Segev brought palpable fire to her performance … Her playing…revealed an almost rapturous sense of mirthful abandonment, all the while maintaining fierce intensity and concentration."
Inbal Segev is “a cellist with something to say” (Gramophone). Combining rich tone and technical mastery with rare dedication and intelligence, she has appeared with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Bamberg Symphony and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra Katowice (NOSPR), collaborating with such prominent conductors as Marin Alsop, Stéphane Denève, Lorin Maazel, Cristian Măcelaru, Zubin Mehta and Edward Gardner. Committed to reinvigorating the cello repertoire, she has commissioned and premiered new cello concertos from Timo Andres, Anna Clyne, Avner Dorman, Fernando Otero, Dan Visconti and Victoria Poleva, whose concerto Segev looks forward to premiering with the Dallas Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras in the 2023-24 season. Recorded with Alsop and the London Philharmonic for Avie Records, Segev’s 2020 premiere recording of Clyne’s new cello concerto, DANCE, was an instant success, topping the Amazon Classical Concertos chart; its opening movement was chosen as one of NPR Music’s “Favorite Songs of 2020,” receiving nine million listens on Spotify, and Segev has continued to tour extensively with the piece. At the start of the pandemic, she launched “20 for 2020,” a commissioning, recording and video project for 20 cutting-edge composers, including John Luther Adams, Viet Cuong, Angélica Negrón and others who she asked to create works in response to the unprecedented worldwide crisis and encourage creative recovery. Her previous discography includes acclaimed recordings of the Elgar Cello Concerto, Romantic cello works and Bach’s Cello Suites, while her popular YouTube masterclass series, Musings with Inbal Segev, has inspired a generation of cellists.
A native of Israel, at 16 Segev was invited by Isaac Stern to continue her cello studies in the U.S., where she earned degrees from Yale University and the Juilliard School, before co-founding the Amerigo Trio with former New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and violist Karen Dreyfus. Segev started composing during the pandemic: her cello quartet, Behold, can be heard on her album 20 for 2020; her cello octet, B Natural, premiered at Yale in 2023; and her forthcoming string trio is scheduled to premiere in the 2025-26 season. Her cello was made by Francesco Ruggieri in 1673.
