Carlotta Dalia

Carlotta Dalia's playing represents the excellence of the Italian tradition – which is at the highest level – and she is on the verge of becoming a world leader in the art of the guitar. Maestro Angelo Gilardino, Suonare News

Born in Tuscany in 1999, guitarist Carlotta Dalia is attracting attention with her passionate and deep interpretations, carried by a round and powerful tone. Since giving her first solo concert at the age of twelve, she has won over 40 national and international competitions, including first prizes in Uppsala, Hong Kong, Miami, and Madrid, as well as at the International Competition Niccolò Paganini in Parma.

She has since become a regular guest on concert stages worldwide, as her past and forthcoming engagements for 2026 and 2027 illustrate: with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Domingo Hindoyan, she performed Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, before travelling to Toronto and Montreal for recitals and to the Handel Festival in Göttingen. In the summer of 2026, she presented a Paganini programme at the Goldmund Festival in Irsee, which will be released on CD in September: on her first album with the Goldmund Quartet, she plays an Ory-Koelliker guitar associated with Paganini. Carlotta Dalia’s recital debut at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam is scheduled for October 2026, followed by a concert with Giuseppe Gibboni in New York and a solo recital at the Homburg Master Concerts. In January, she will perform Rodrigo with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille under Satoshi Yoneda, and in May, Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Guitar Concerto No. 1 with the Orchestra del Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, conducted by Donato Renzetti.

Past tours have taken the guitarist to Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Sweden, Russia, Ireland, Japan, various Latin American countries, Latvia, Lebanon, the Netherlands, China and Switzerland, amongst others. With cellist Maximilian Hornung, she most recently performed in Friedrichshafen and at the Teatro Grande in Brescia. She also performs regularly in a duo with violinist Giuseppe Gibboni (winner of the 2021 Paganini Violin Competition in Genoa) – the two played, among other places, in Rome’s Quirinal Palace at the invitation of Italian President Sergio Mattarella; the concert was broadcast live on Italian radio. Over the past two concert seasons, Carlotta Dalia has performed in Norway and Brazil, as well as in Athens, Florence, Lima, Santiago de Chile, Istanbul, the Nikolaisaal in Potsdam and the Staatstheater Darmstadt. With the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, she played Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Guitar Concerto No. 1 in Uppsala.

She released her first CD Gran Solo with works by Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Scarlatti, Bach, and Sor at the age of 16. A second recording, including compositions by Bach’s contemporary Silvius Leopold Weiss, followed in 2018. In 2020, she recorded a sonatina by Angelo Gilardino dedicated to her under the title Angelus, which was released together with works by other composers; in the same year, her recording of the complete guitar works by Ida Presti appeared. For this recording she was awarded the Chitarre d'oro prize in Milan in October 2022. A solo album with works by and for Andrés Segovia, including a new composition by Enrico Melozzi, was released in spring 2025 on the Berlin Classics label, which previously signed the young guitarist.

Carlotta Dalia began playing the guitar at the age of eight and graduated with distinction in 2017 from the renowned Accademia Chigiana in Siena, where she studied with Oscar Ghiglia. She completed postgraduate studies as a student of Laura Young at the Mozarteum Salzburg in 2022 and has been a D’Addario Artist since 2016. She is supported by Classically Connected, Inc. (formerly Si-Yo Music Foundation) in New York and the Adopt a Musician Foundation in Lugano – the latter also kindly lent her the 1939 Hermann Hauser I guitar that he built for Andrès Segovia. She also performs on a Matthias Dammann 2023 guitar and a 1952 Conde Hermanos Sobrinos de Domingo Esteso flamenco guitar, the legendary “Media Luna Flamenca” model associated with Paco de Lucía. She has been a lecturer at Conservatorio “Gaetano Donizetti” (Politecnico delle Arti di Bergamo) since 2024.

Saison 2026/27

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Niccolò Paganini was not only a legendary violin virtuoso – he was also a passionate guitarist, chamber musician and composer of unforgettable melodies. This programme sheds light on a lesser-known but fascinating aspect of his oeuvre, bringing together his String Quartet in A minor, Guitar Quartet No. 15, and Boccherini’s sparkling Fandango Guitar Quintet, as well as arrangements of Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 and La Campanella for guitar and string quartet.