©Photo: Piera Mungiguerra

Lorenza Borrani

Violin

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“Borrani was amazing in her solos, fiery and hypnotic yet tender and liquid as well.”
(Sydney Arts Guide, November 2016)

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, Camerata Bern and Arctic Philharmonic.

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.

As a chamber musician, Borrani has collaborated with artists such as András Schiff, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Janine Jansen and Daniel Hope, and she regularly plays in a duo with Alexander Lonquich.

This season her collaborations include a programme of Schumann and Brahms with Kristian Bezuidenhout and colleagues at the Köln Philharmonie and Bozar. She will also focus onMozart’s two-viola quintets, working alongside colleagues to bring these masterpieces to a wider audience. The group made its first appearance at Schloss Elmau in March 2018 and will continue to tour the works in 2019/2020.

Borrani becomes Artist-in-Residence of Norwegian Chamber Orchestra in 2020. Projects she is developing with them include a staged performance of Haydn’s Symphony No.60, based on incidental music for ‘Le Distrait’ by Jean-François Regnard.

As a soloist she has collaborated with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Trevor Pinnock, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Bernard Haitink.

Borrani studied with Alina Company, Piero Farulli, Zinaida Gilels and Pavel Vernikov at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, and took the postgraduate course at the Kunstuniversität Graz with Boris Kuschnir. She is a Professor of Violin at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole and plays on a Santo Serafino violin, made in Venice in 1745.

Franz Schubert: String Trio in B flat major, D.581, 1. Allegro moderato © Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

Lorenza Borrani rehearses Schumann’s Symphony No.1 with Spira mirabilis © medici.tv

Lorenza Borrani & Chamber Orchestra of Europe © photowerk

“Lorenza Borrani led the Australian Chamber Orchestra with a style that always turned inwards to the music – its subtlety of phrasing, its expressive range and scope and its seriousness of utterance… Her arrangement of Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1 for violin and string orchestra retained the work’s originality and intimacy.”

(The Sydney Morning Herald, Peter McCallum, March 2019)

“To have the audience leaning in, listening to the musical narrative, as guest director Lorenza Borrani does from bar one of the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s second tour for the year is really something… With Borrani directing with her focus on crisp articulation and style over swagger, Beethoven’s venerable
String Quartet No 16 becomes something quite different.”

(The Australian, Martin Buzacott, March 2019)

“Borrani’s adaptation of Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No.1 acted to amplify the work’s emotional polarities: the wild invention of Prokofiev’s harmonic and textural language was revealed and glancing blows of dissonance rebounded against itinerant cadences before yielding to more reflective lyricism. In the eye of this storm, Borrani’s robust yet sensitive playing offered a rock-steady anchor.”

(The Age, Maxim Boon, March 2019)

“Borrani’s contribution this year was Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1, and it is masterly. She gains some amazing effects, from the resonant low passages at the
very beginning of the work to the sublime, silvery sheen of the closing bars of the first movement, the violin whirling around in wispy scales above a rumbling foundation. A fantastic piece, and a fantastic performance.”

(The Advertise, Peter Burdon, March 2019)

“Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No.1, arranged for violin and strings by Borrani, was given a powerful, passionate performance. The first movement opened sombrely and sorrowfully and featured an eloquent, almost heartbreaking solo by Borrani… It was breathless and tempestuous with a somewhat quieter segment then a return to the insistent flurries as a discussion between the various sections of the Orchestra and Borrrani. Dynamic and driven it ended on a circling, aching cry.”

(Sydney Arts Guide, Lynne Lancaster, March 2019)

“There is an obvious rapport between Borrani and the musicians of the ACO, who brought out the tenebrous menace she captures in her string arrangement
of Prokofiev’s Sonata for Violin and Piano. Borrani brought a yearning melancholy to the lyrical moments that emerge from the grittier energy of the Allegro
Brusco, while her sinuous lines in the Andante were chilling at the lower end, her high register penetrating with a laser-like heat.”

(Limelight, Angus McPherson, March, 2019)

(Peter McCallum, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 2019)

“To have the audience leaning in, listening to the musical narrative, as guest director Lorenza Borrani does from bar one of the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s second tour for the year is really something… With Borrani directing with her focus on crisp articulation and style over swagger, Beethoven’s venerable String Quartet No 16 becomes something quite different.”

(Martin Buzacott, The Australian, March 2019)

(Maxim Boon, The Age, March 2019)

“Borrani’s contribution this year was Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1, and it is masterly. She gains some amazing effects, from the resonant low passages at the very beginning of the work to the sublime, silvery sheen of the closing bars of the first movement, the violin whirling around in wispy scales above a rumbling foundation. A fantastic piece, and a fantastic performance.”

(Peter Burdon, The Advertiser, March 2019)

“Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No.1, arranged for violin and strings by Borrani, was given a powerful, passionate performance. The first movement opened sombrely and sorrowfully and featured an eloquent, almost heartbreaking solo by Borrani[…] It was breathless and tempestuous with a somewhat quieter segment then a return to the insistent flurries as a discussion between the various sections of the Orchestra and Borrrani. Dynamic and driven it ended on a circling, aching cry.”

(Lynne Lancaster, Sydney Arts Guide, March 2019)

“There is an obvious rapport between Borrani and the musicians of the ACO, who brought out the tenebrous menace she captures in her string arrangement of Prokofiev’s Sonata for Violin and Piano. Borrani brought a yearning melancholy to the lyrical moments that emerge from the grittier energy of the Allegro Brusco, while her sinuous lines in the Andante were chilling at the lower end, her high register penetrating with a laser-like heat.”

(Angus McPherson, Limelight, March 2019)

“Tonight’s guest director, Lorenza Borrani impressed the audiences not only with her performance of Schnittke, but also with her leadership that shaped the big span of the Beethoven symphony in the plush acoustic of the Aula.”

(Kjell Moe, Kulturspeilet, October 2017)

“Her preferences for delicacy and exploitation of the many, many developmental shades of pianissimo in slowly building crescendos produced a remarkable sound. … What a joy to hear Alfred Schnittke’s Sonata for Violin and Chamber Orchestra played with such intelligence and humour!”

(Jennifer Gall, The Sydney Morning Hearald, November 2016)

“Borrani has lean, agile sound and appealing musicality and brought keen intelligence to the ‘polystylism’”

(The Sydney Morning Herald, November 2016)

“In the wrong hands, it could sound chaotic. Borrani and the ACO’s spectacular performance made it feel seamlessly structured. Always attuned to the sonata’s sudden changes of mood and violent stylistic juxtapositions, the group’s tight-knit ensemble and incisive attack realised the passages of dissonant aggression while their soft-grained sonorities and soulfully phrased melodic shards captured its moments of mournful reflection.”

(The Australian, November 2016)

“Borrani’s pizzicato double-stops producing a folky ambience as she effortlessly navigated sudden accents and dynamic shifts. The Schnittke was a fascinating work for which Borrani seemed to have an incredible affinity.”

(Limelight Magazine, November 2016)

“Under the excellent direction of guest director and violinist Lorenza Borrani, who clearly had a great rapport with the Orchestra, we were treated to a superb performance by the ACO. … Borrani was amazing in her solos, fiery and hypnotic yet tender and liquid as well.”

(Sydney Arts Guide, November 2016)