As a pianist and as a conductor,
Vanessa Benelli Mosell unites a rich and stimulating diversity of musical and cultural
threads. Trained in her native Italy, Russia, the UK and
France, she shapes her repertoire and career with distinctive
passion, conviction and intellectual curiosity. In her development as an artist she has
drawn on the wisdom such mentors as Dmitri Alexeev, Daniel Harding, Mikko Franck, Cristian
Mãcelaru, George Benjamin and the late Karlheinz Stockhausen,whose conception of sound proved revelatory to her as a pianist.

The works of contemporary composers comprise a significant strand in her career. Her
performances of Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke attracted the attention of
the composer, who invited her to study with him, citing her
“power to let people appreciate my music”. Vanessa Benelli Mosell has since
collaborated with leading contemporary composers, such as
George Benjamin, Olga Neuwirth, Hugues Dufourt, Philippe Schoeller, Claire-Melanie Sinnhuber, Stefano
Gervasoni, Martin Matalon and Marco Stroppa.

Fascinated from an early age by the orchestra and opera, and always conscious of the piano as a ‘symphonic’ instrument, Vanessa Benelli Mosell made her conducting debut in 2018, interpreting music by the 20th century French composer Gérard Grisey. Since then, she has balanced her burgeoning conducting career with her continuing activities as a pianist. Among the composers closest to her heart as a conductor are Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms.

In 2023 she appears as a conductor with the JuniOrchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Sanremo (in a programme of Muratore, Finzi and Elgar), and in Paris (Radio France) and Lyon (Grame) with the electronic/acoustic ensemble Le Balcon.

In the past seasons Vanessa Benelli Mosell has conducted ensembles and orchestras such as the Klassische Philharmonie Bonn (with Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle and Stuttgart’s Liederhalle among the venues), Youth Academic Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra (LVSO), Milan’s Divertimento Ensemble, the Romanian Chamber Orchestra, United Europe Symphony Orchestra, the Wiener Kammerorchester (for the Austrian premiere of Eric Tanguy’s Incanto for orchestra) and the Witold Lutosławski Chamber Philharmonic. In 2019 she won second prize in the European round of the inaugural MAWOMA (Music And Women Maestra), the first worldwide competition for women orchestra conductors.

Born in Tuscany, Vanessa Benelli Mosell began studying music at the age of three and was admitted four years later to the renowned International Piano Academy in Imola. She made her concerto debut aged nine and her New York debut at the age of 11, when the distinguished pianist Pascal Rogé described her as “the most natural musical talent I have encountered in my entire life”. In 2007 she entered the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where her professor was Mikhail Voskresensky, before continuing her studies with Dmitri Alexeev at London’s Royal College of Music, graduating with a master’s degree in 2012.

Vanessa Benelli Mosell studied conducting in Strasbourg with Luca Pfaff, a pupil of both Hans Swarowsky and Franco Ferrara, and has received further coaching and mentoring from, among others, Cristian Mãcelaru, Mikko Franck, Daniel Harding, Rüdiger Bohn, Uroš Lajovic, Colin Metters and Günter Neuhold.

2023/2024

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