Hendrikx is in high demand as a concert soloist, and he has appeared with a great selection of acclaimed orchestras. Especially noteworthy was his recent Mozart tour across Flanders and The Netherlands with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Edward Gardner.

Roeland Hendrikx’ presence on concert stages around the world should not obscure his deep love of chamber music. Hendrikx has cooperated with acclaimed colleagues like Severin Von Eckardstein, Liebrecht Vanbeckevoort, Jan Michiels, the Panocha Quartet, Tempera Quartet, Doric Quartet, Danel Quartet, Silesian String Quartet and the Berliner Philharmoniker Streichquintett. In 2015, Roeland founded the Roeland Hendrikx Ensemble, which focuses on the rich repertoire for clarinet, piano and strings.

Hendrikx’s latest release “The clarinet as prima donna” features clarinet concertos and opera arias by Carl Maria von Weber with the Rheinische Philharmonie and award-winning arranger Andreas Tarkmann, who fashioned a new cadenza for the first concerto, and recomposed Leise, leise, the central aria from Der Freischütz, for clarinet and orchestra.

Roeland Hendrikx’s other recording activities bear testimony to an unusual versatility. In 2018, he enlisted the venerable London Philharmonic Orchestra to enregister the Mozart, Finzi and Bruch concertos, an accomplishment that “had it all”, according to Diapason: “accuracy, lyricism, elegance”. Following this large-scale extravaganza, Hendrikx scaled down to smaller line-ups. In 2020 he tackled Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint in an immersive recording adventure (called The Harmony of Isolation), followed by a crossover project which fused Saint-Saëns Carnaval des Animaux and Apollinaire’s literary Bestiaire in a chamber-musical Animal Farm, hailed by France Musique as a “magnificent rearrangement (…) of compositions at once musical, pictorial, and poetic”.

Roeland has many acclaimed chamber music recordings to his credit, including the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintets (“chamber music at its best” – De Standaard), the Debussy and Poulenc Sonatas (“a delight” –Gramophone), and the Clarinet Quintet by Piet Swerts (“infinitely seductive” – Resmusica).

In 2015 Roeland Hendrikx founded his own chamber music ensemble, which essentially focuses on the rich repertoire for clarinet, piano and strings. In the largest line-up, there are six musicians on stage, but programmes in trio, quartet or quintet formation are also on offer.

Although he gave his name to the ensemble, and remains its inspiration and driving force, Roeland exclusively works with like-minded colleagues. These are chosen in function of their technical and expressive craftsmanship, but also on the basis of the stripes they have earned in other ensembles, and the uniqueness they contribute to the chemistry of the ensemble. Because the Roeland Hendrikx Ensemble is a permanent collective that remains loyal to a small number of musicians, it can function – much more than any ad hoc formation – as a laboratory in which various spirits and styles can collaborate towards one overwhelming melting point.

The Roeland Hendrikx Ensemble is often praised for its technical perfection and the special symbiosis that emerges when individual talents consciously choose to collaborate instead of engaging in fleeting experiences. The ensemble has only one goal: to move, to enrapture, ... and to provide a memorable listening experience.