Delyana Lazarova, conductor

As a conductor, Delyana Lazarova thinks of herself as a musician among musicians. Collaboration, openness and sensitivity to the specific sound and character of every orchestra are the foundation of her work, all in service to the music. Orchestras worldwide appreciate her ability to communicate sound and create an environment in which music can simply unfold.

Recent seasons have been rich with new encounters and news of Lazarova’s remarkable talent has spread rapidly. This season, she will make her debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife, and Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and will be conducting the Malmö Symphony, and Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Sao Paolo. She will also work with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and the Royal Northern Sinfonia for the first time. Reinvitations will take Lazarova back to The Hallé, the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, and Orchestre National de Lille among others. Furthermore, following her debut at the Enescu Festival last season, she will opened this year’s George Enescu International Competition in autumn 2024.

Lazarova will be on tour with three orchestras this season: following her successful debut in 2022, she will lead the Kammerorchester Basel in concerts in South America; perform with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie in Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg; and give four regional concerts with Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie.

Delyana Lazarova’s wide-ranging repertoire has been influenced by her international musical education. Born in Bulgaria, she has a natural affinity to Eastern European and Russian repertoire (Dvořák, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Bartók), but feels equally at home in the Viennese Classical period, influenced by her studies in Switzerland. Lazarova is passionate about music of the 20th and 21st centuries. In the 2024-25 season, she begins her role as Artistic Partner of ROCO in Houston, a chamber orchestra specialising in contemporary music, with whom she will premiere Clarice Assad’s piano concerto ‘Total Eclipse’, among others. Further complimenting her rapport with contemporary music, Lazarova’s first CD, recorded with the Hallé, was released in October 2023 and includes works by Bulgarian composer, Dobrinka Tabakova.

In recent seasons, Delyana Lazarova has worked with orchestras such as the Minnesota Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre National de Lille, Göteborgs Symfoniker, Fort Worth Symphony, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Staatsorchester Darmstadt, WDR Funkhausorchester, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Sinfónica de Navarra, Kammerorchester Basel, Klangforum Wien, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Estonian Festival Orchestra and the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra.

After winning the inaugural Siemens Hallé International Conductors Competition, Delyana served as Assistant Conductor to Sir Mark Elder at the Hallé Orchestra and Music Director of the Hallé Youth Orchestra from 2020-2023. She also assisted Cristian Măcelaru at the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln and the Orchestre National de France. In 2020 she won the James Conlon Conducting Prize at the prestigious Aspen Music Festival, earlier successes include the NRTA International Conducting Competition in 2019, and the Bruno Walter Conducting Scholarship at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California in 2017 and 2018.

Delyana studied conducting at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK) with Professor Johannes Schlaefli. She attended numerous master classes with Bernard Haitink, Paavo Järvi, Leonard Slatkin, Mark Stringer, Robert Spano and Matthias Pintscher, among others. In addition to her master’s degree in conducting, she is an accomplished violinist with a master’s degree and performance diploma from the Jacobs School of Music in Indiana, where she studied under Mauricio Fuks and received a scholarship for artistic excellence.