Nordland Music Festival 2024
31st July - 4th August 2024
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On 31st July, COE Leader Lorenza Borrani, strings and clarinets take flight to Northern Norway where they join mezzo-soprano Marianne Beate Kielland for the opening concert of the Nordland Music Festival at the Stormen Concert Hall in Bodø on 3rd August. This concert takes the COE further north than we have ever played and it has been many months in the making; a celebration of Bodø being one of the European Capitals of Culture for 2024. They will perform songs by Grieg, Schubert and Mahler as well as Mendelssohn’s Konzertstück No. 2 and Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 11 (arranged for string orchestra by Gustav Mahler). This is the Orchestra’s second time in Norway, following concerts with Vilde Frang and Rafael Payare in Oslo and Bergen in 2022.
The first ever European Capital of Culture within the Arctic circle, Bodø is in Nordland, a region which stretches 800 km from north to south and where the midnight sun shines for weeks on end. Opened just under 10 years ago in November 2014, the Stormen Concert Hall is part of the development of a cultural quarter on Bodø’s waterfront. The project includes a concert hall and a library, both designed by London-based architects DRDH who were awarded the project in 2009 through an international competition. Working with Arup Acoustics, DRDH created a concert hall that has one of the best acoustics in Europe and which is home to the Arctic Sinfonietta which, when it joins forces with Tromsø’s Arctic Chamber Orchestra, forms the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra.
Linda Netland, the Nordland Music Festival Director, said: « We are excited to welcome the Chamber Orchestra of Europe to Bodø. The dialogue between Nordland Musikkfestuke (Nordland Music Festival) and the orchestra began last spring and resulted in an excellent program after a fruitful collaboration. We believe the program put together for the opening of Nordland Music Festival provides a beautiful start to a week packed with concerts and events. Marianne Beate Kielland is an excellent choice as soloist; she has a strong connection to our region, and we eagerly anticipate her performance with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. The repertoire is also fitting, given that Bodø is the European Capital of Culture – featuring classical and romantic pieces from some of our finest composers, all performed by one of Europe’s foremost chamber orchestras. »
Lorenza Borrani has been Leader of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe since 2008. She also performs as Leader, director, soloist and chamber musician in Europe and the world’s major concert halls and festivals – including the Berlin Philharmonie (Berlin’s Musikfest), the Edinburgh Festival, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Paris Philharmonie, the Aldeburgh Festival, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Sydney’s Opera House.
Lorenza was a member of Orchestra Mozart from 2005 to 2008 and, in November 2006, under Claudio Abbado, she performed the rarely played Violin Concerto No. 7 by Mozart at the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara.
She has been Leader of Symphonica Toscanini (Lorin Maazel) since 2003 and has won several national and international prizes.
Born in Florence in 1983, Lorenza started studying the violin at age 5 at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole with Alina Company, Piero Farulli, Zinaida Gilels and Pavel Vernikov, with whom she performed Bach’s Concerto for 2 Violins for her concert debut in 1995. Lorenza undertook postgraduate studies at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz, Austria, with Boris Kuschnir and had several masterclasses with Pier Naciso Maso, S. Rostropovich, Ana Chumachenko, Maya Glezarova and Ilya Grubert.
As chamber musician and soloist she has collaborated with conductors Yuri Harohnovich, Gyorgy Gyorivany Rath, Claudio Abbado, Trevor Pinnock, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Bernard Haitink and took part to many chamber music festivals performing with Isabelle Faust, Hélène Grimaud, Daniel Hope, David Finkler (Emerson String Quartet), Sir András Schiff, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Irina Schnittke, Tabea Zimmermann, Mario Brunello, Christan Tetzlaff, Alexander Lonquich, L. Zilberstein, Pavel Gililov, Janine Jansen. She is one of the founders of the “Spira mirabilis” project and is a Professor of Violin at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole (Florence).
Lorenza plays a Santo Serafino (Venice, 1745).
The Leader Chair is supported by Ms Dasha Shenkman.
Listen to Lorenza on Interlude, the COE’s podcast.
« A singer with such a charisma challenged her colleagues. » (DrehPunkt-Kultur) Mezzo-soprano Marianne Beate Kielland is famous for her strong stage presence and musical integrity. Gramophone Magazine writes about her: « The mezzo-soprano is quite outstanding: strong, firm, sensitive in modulations, imaginative in her treatment of words, with a voice pure in quality, wide in range and unfalteringly true in intonation. »
She was educated at the Norwegian Academy of Music, where she studied with Svein Bjørkøy. She has also studied with Oren Brown and Barbara Bonney.
She is one of Europe’s foremost concert singers, and she regularly appears in the concert halls of Europe, Japan and America with conductors such as: Masaaki Suzuki, Andrew Manze, Michel Corboz, Leonardo Alarcon, Herbert Blomstedt, Christopher Moulds, Jordi Savall, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Rene Jacobs, Pablo Heras-Casado, Han-Na Chang, Juanjo Mena and Ottavio Dantone.
In 2012 she was US Grammy nominee in « Best Vocal Classical Album» for « Veslemøy Synsk » by Olav Anton Thommessen, and with this and more than 60 other recordings and a wide range of repertoire and performances, she is established as a remarkable interpreter of music from baroque to contemporary era. She is the artistic leader of Oslo Chamber Music Festival and part-time associate professor at Norwegian Academy of Music.