Sabine Meyer


Sabine Meyer is a German classical clarinetist. She ended her career with a final chamber music performance on 15 December 2025 in Bern.

Biography

Born in Crailsheim, Baden-Württemberg, Meyer began playing the clarinet at an early age. Her first teacher was her father, also a clarinetist. She studied with Otto Hermann in Stuttgart and then with Hans Deinzer at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover, along with her brother, clarinetist Wolfgang Meyer, and husband, clarinetist Reiner Wehle, who played later in the Munich Philharmonic. She began her career as a member of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic, where her appointment as one of the orchestra's first female members caused controversy. Herbert von Karajan, the orchestra's music director, hired Meyer in September 1982, but the players voted against her at the conclusion of her probation period by a vote of 73 to 4. The orchestra insisted the reason was that her tone did not blend with the other members of the section, but some observers, including Karajan, believed that the true reason was her gender. In 1983, after nine months, Meyer left the orchestra to become a full-time solo clarinetist.
In addition to her work as a soloist, and a band member in general, Sabine Meyer is a committed player of chamber music and plays all styles of classical music. She was a member of the Trio di Clarone along with her brother and her husband who have recorded many CDs. Meyer and her wind quintet have worked as members of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra with Claudio Abbado.
By the 1990s, Meyer had become a prominent solo clarinetist, recording regularly and exclusively for the EMI label. These EMI recordings include a CD of French music for Clarinet and Piano with Oleg Maisenberg, entitled French Recital. A disc of clarinet concertos by Ludwig Spohr and Franz Krommer was released in July 2007, for which she collaborated with her student Julian Bliss.
From 1993 to the winter semester 2019/2020 she shared with her husband a professorship at Musikhochschule Lübeck, in Schleswig-Holstein. Her husband's successor is his former student Jens Thoben. She was professor until October 2022.
Her clarinet students have also included Shirley Brill, Annelien Van Wauwe, Sebastian Manz, Taira Kaneko and Han Kim.

Instruments

Sabine Meyer plays the clarinet and basset clarinet in B and A, as well as a basset horn in F, all made of grenadilla by Herbert Wurlitzer, and clarinets in B and in A made of boxwood, manufactured by Schwenk & Seggelke, which she mainly uses in chamber music. In 1984, Meyer commissioned Wurlitzer to build a basset clarinet for her, not a historical replica but a modern, hitherto only occasionally, built instrument. Since then, she has been playing the clarinet concerto by Mozart in a reconstructed version.

Retirement

Meyer chose to retire from the concert stage at the age of 66, citing the physical demands of playing the clarinet at the highest level as well as her wish to step back from the pressures of an intensive concert schedule after many decades. Her farewell concerts focused primarily on chamber music. On 4 December 2025, she performed in Berlin with the Armida Quartet in Brahms's Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115. Her final public concert took place on 15 December 2025 in Bern, featuring a Christmas programme performed together with the Alliage Saxophone Quintet.

Awards

Selected recordings