Gwyneth Wentink was born in 1981 in the Netherlands, into a family of Hungarian and Dutch musicians. Ms Wentink had her first harp lesson at the age of five. When she was eight, she played Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp with the Netherlands National Youth Orchestra in Rotterdam. At the age of ten she performed for Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. She studied at the Utrecht Conservatory with Erika Waardenburg and obtained her diploma with the highest marks, cum laude.
Ms Wentink has participated in master classes with Maria Graf, Susanne McDonald, Catherine Michel, Andrée Laurens-King and Susanna Mildonian.
As a soloist with orchestra, Ms Wentink has performed extensively in Europe and the United States, making her New York concerto debut in 2001 with the New York Chamber Symphony. She has given solo harp recitals all over the world: Paris, Bucharest, Barcelona, Washington DC, Prague, Rome, Venice, and Stresa. She also performed at the Montpellier Radio-France Festival and gave her first recital at the Wigmore Hall in London in 1999.
In her home country, Ms Wentink has been collecting awards since the age of eleven: The Young Music Talent Foundation, Princess Christina Competition, and so on. Abroad, she was awarded at The International Nippon Harp Competition in Tokyo and the Torneo Internazionale di Musica in Rome. In 1998 she won the most prestigious International Harp Competition in Israel, as the youngest contestant ever and was awarded the special Gulbenkian Prize for the best performance of the Concerto for Harp and Orchestra by Schafer.
In 1999, at the age of 17, Ms Wentink won the First Prize at the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York and was awarded in 2000 the Aaron & Irene Diamond Soloist Prize, while in 2001 she received the Richard Hall Foundation Prize and more recently (2002), the Netherlands-American Foundation Prize. She recently released a harp solo CD, which has received high praise.
Further information may be found at her official website, www.gwynethwentink.nl.
