Lorenza Borrani’s musical leadership skills have taken her around the world as both concertmaster and ensemble director, as well as in solo and chamber work

Since 2008 she has been concertmaster of Chamber Orchestra of Europe. There she had the opportunity to work with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who inspired her love and knowledge of period performance practice. Her leadership skills were recognised early on – she led orchestras including Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Lorin Maazel’s Symphonica Toscanini. She was also appointed to Claudio Abbado’s Orchestra Mozart between 2005 and 2008, with which she performed Mozart’s Violin Concerto No 7.

More recently, she has directed groups such as Freiburger Barockorchester and Australian Chamber Orchestra, with whom she premiered her own orchestral arrangement of Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No 1 on tour across Australia in spring 2019. In future seasons, she will return to play-direct at Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and make her debuts with Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Camerata Bern.

Borrani is one of the co-founders of Spira mirabilis, a laboratory for the preparation and performance of orchestral and chamber music repertoire of all periods, which works without a conductor or leader. Their recent projects have included Beethoven’s Symphony No 9, fragments from Mozart’s Così fan tutte and the premiere of Colin Matthew’s Spiralling in Aldeburgh.

Image: Piera Mungiguerra