Delyana Lazarova

About Delyana

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.

In the 2023/24 season, Lazarova will appear as guest at the Enescu Festival Bucharest for the first time, open the season of the Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck, and makes her debut with the Orchestre National de Bordeaux, BBC Symphony and BBC Scottish Orchestras, Dresdner Philharmonie and Deutsches Sinfonieorchester Berlin. She will celebrate the New Year with Sinfonieorchester Basel and bring the violin concerto by Bulgarian composer Pancho Vladigerov to the Elbphilharmonie with the Hamburger Camerata. Delyana Lazarova also makes her debut with the Oregon Symphony Orchestra and leads the Sofia Philharmonic and Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestras, the two most renowned orchestras in her home country. She continues her close relationship with the Hallé Orchestra.

Delyana Lazarova’s international musical education influences her wide-ranging repertoire. 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, mainly influenced by her studies in Switzerland. Lazarova is passionate about music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Following her highly successful debut in November 2022, she will lead two further 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, Clyne and 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 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, 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.