Laura Andriani - Violin

Laura Andriani studied violin with Elena Guizzardi and Massimo Marin at the
“Giuseppe Verdi” Conservatory in Turin, where she graduated at the age of 17.
She continued her studies with Corrado Romano, Franco Gulli, Adelina Oprean
(getting the Solisten-Diplom at the Musik-Akademie Basel), and Salvatore

Accardo (Accademia Stauffer). She specialized in chamber music at the Britten-
Pears School in Aldeburgh, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the

Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, under the guidance of members of the Amadeus,
Smetana, and Italiano Quartets. At the same time, she graduated with highest
honors in Literature and Philosophy from the University of Turin (2005).
At the age of twenty, she performed regularly at Teatro alla Scala with the
Orchestra del Teatro, the Filarmonica della Scala, and the Orchestra da Camera
della Scala. She subsequently obtained a permanent position at the Teatro Regio
in Turin and collaborated extensively with the Orchestra da Camera Italiana and
the ensemble Sentieri Selvaggi. After serving as first violin of the Quartetto
Andriani, she moved to Québec in 2003 as first violin of the Alcan Quartet,
whose intense concert and recording activity (Mendelssohn, Gould, MacMillan,
and the complete Beethoven string quartets) received wide international
acclaim.
Winner of first prizes in Italian competitions (Mantova, Vittorio Veneto), in 1997
she received the Special Jury Prize at the International Violin Competition
“Premio Paganini” in Genoa for her performance of Sequenza VIII by Luciano
Berio. In 2010, the CD Chant de terre et de ciel (music by Messiaen) won the
Opus of the Year award from the Conseil québécois de la musique.
An active interpreter from the Baroque to the contemporary repertoire, she
adopts a historically informed approach. Since 2016, following her encounter
with Sigiswald Kuijken, she has devoted herself to historically informed
performance without chinrest (chin-off), with particular focus on Bach’s Sonatas
and Partitas. In Canada she has collaborated with Les Idées Heureuses, Caprice,
Arion, Les Boréades, and Tafelmusik, and she performs regularly in Europe with
La Petite Bande, Il Gardellino, and Il Pomo d’Oro.
Among her recent research projects is historically informed performance of
nineteenth-century violin repertoire; her recording of Paganini’s 24 Caprices on
gut strings and historical bows was released in 2022 by the Passacaille label.
Since September 2023, she has been a doctoral candidate in the docARTES
program at the Orpheus Instituut in Ghent and participates in the research
cluster Declassifying the Classics (Tom Beghin). She has taught Baroque violin
and ensemble at McGill University and modern violin and chamber music at
the Université de Montréal. She currently teaches violin at the “Puccini”
Conservatory in La Spezia.