Collaboration, openness and sensitivity to the specific sound and character of each orchestra are at the heart of the work of the talented Bulgarian conductor DELYANA LAZAROVA (1985), dedicated to the service of art. Orchestras all over the world appreciate her ability to create magnificent sound environments in which music can unfold. In the 2023/24 concert season, Lazarova makes her first guest appearance at the prestigious Enescu International Festival Bucharest. In October, she will open the season of the Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck and will make her debut with the Orchestre National de Bordeaux. She is also due to perform with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Orchestra. In November she will conduct the Dresdner Philharmonie and in December she will appear with the Deutsches Sinfonieorchester Berlin and the Philharmonie der Aargau. She will celebrate the New Year with the Sinfonieorchester Basel and bring the violin concerto by Bulgarian composer Pancho Vladigerov to the Elbphilharmonie with the Hamburger Camerata and soloist Joanna Kamenarska.
Delyana Lazarova also makes her debut with the Oregon Symphony Orchestra and directs the Sofia Philharmonic and Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestras, the two most renowned orchestras in Bulgaria. She continues her close relationship with the Hallé Orchestra.
Delyana Lazarova’s international musical education has influenced her broad repertoire. Born in Bulgaria, she has a natural affinity for Eastern European and Russian repertoire (Dvořák, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Bartók), but feels equally at home in the Viennese Classical period, mainly influenced by her studies in Switzerland. Ma.Lazarova is passionate about the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Following her highly successful debut in November 2022 , she will lead two more projects with the ROCO Chamber Orchestra in Houston in February 2024, including a world premiere by Adam Schoenberg and works by Aaron Copland, Elfrida Andrée and Jessica Meyer. With Collegium Novum Zurich, she will perform Romitelli’s An Index of Metals, and together with the Munich Chamber Orchestra she will dedicate herself to music by Chin, Shostakovich, Anna Klein and György Ligeti. In autumn 2023 Lazarova’s first CD was released, recorded with the Hallé Orchestra and featuring works by Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova.
In recent seasons, Delyana Lazarova has worked with orchestras such as the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre National de Lille, Göteborgs Symfoniker, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Staatsorchester Darmstadt, WDR Funkhausorchester, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Kammerorchester Basel, Klangforum Wien, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Estonian Festival Orchestra and the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra, Philharmonia for Chamber Music – Graubünden, etc.
After winning the inaugural Siemens Hallé International Conductors Competition in 2020 , Delyana Lazarova 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 in Tirana, Albania (2019), and the Bruno Walter Conducting Scholarship at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California in 2017 and 2018.
Delyana Lazarova was born in Plovdiv, graduated from the Dobrin Petkov National Music School with a degree in violin in the class of Violeta Stoyanova. She studied conducting at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK) with Professor Johannes Schlaefli. 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.
She honed her professional skills in numerous masterclasses in conducting with Bernard Haitink, Paavo Järvi, Leonard Slatkin, Mark Stringer, Robert Spano and Matthias Pintscher, among others.