Michele Campanella (born 5 June 1947) is an Italian pianist who specialises in the music of Franz Liszt, and is also a conductor.
Campanella was born in Naples in 1947. He won the Alfredo Casella Prize at age 19, after studying with Vincenzo Vitale. This led to an international performing career, taking him to many countries (the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, China, Argentina, Brazil), regularly appearing at international music festivals such as Lucerne, Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Taormina, Turin, and Pesaro, [1] and working with such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Vernon Handley, Eliahu Inbal, Sir Charles Mackerras, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Georges Prêtre, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Thomas Schippers, Hubert Soudant, and Christian Thielemann. [1] [2]
He is also a regular chamber music player, and has often appeared with Salvatore Accardo, Rocco Filippini and Claudio Desderi. [2]
He has devoted complete seasons to a single composer—Franz Liszt, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms. [2]
He has recorded the complete works of Beethoven, Mozart's piano concertos, the complete variations by Brahms, [1] and the complete Hungarian Rhapsodies and many of the major transcriptions of Liszt. [3] [4] For his Liszt recordings, Campanella received the Grand Prix du Disque of the Franz Liszt Society in Budapest in 1976, 1977 and 1998, as well as the "Premio della critica discografica italiana" in 1980. [1] He also received the Fondazione Premio Napoli and Fondazione Guido e Roberto Cortese awards. [4]
Campanella has also recorded works by Mily Balakirev, Ferruccio Busoni, Frédéric Chopin, Muzio Clementi, Modest Mussorgsky, Francis Poulenc, Maurice Ravel, Gioachino Rossini, Camille Saint-Saëns, Domenico Scarlatti, Franz Schubert, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Carl Maria von Weber.
Campanella is professor of piano at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana of Siena. He is also a member of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. [2] He gives annual master classes at the Villa Rufolo in Ravello. [1]
He has performed as conductor and soloist with several Italian orchestras, including the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the ORT-Orchestra della Toscana, the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento, I Filarmonici di Verona, and the Orchestra da Camera of Padua. [4] [5]
Carlo Maria Giulini was an Italian conductor. From the age of five, when he began to play the violin, Giulini's musical education was expanded when he began to study at Italy's foremost conservatory, the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome at the age of 16. Initially, he studied the viola and conducting; then, following an audition, he won a place in the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
István Kertész was a Hungarian orchestral and operatic conductor who throughout his brief career led many of the world's great orchestras, including the Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Detroit, San Francisco and Minnesota Orchestras in the United States, as well as the London Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, and L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. His orchestral repertoire numbered over 450 works from all periods, and was matched by a repertoire of some sixty operas ranging from Mozart, Verdi, Puccini and Wagner to the more contemporary Prokofiev, Bartók, Britten, Kodály, Poulenc and Janáček. Kertész was part of a musical tradition that produced fellow Hungarian conductors Fritz Reiner, Antal Doráti, János Ferencsik, Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, János Fürst, Peter Erős, Ferenc Fricsay, and Georg Solti.
Dino Ciani was an Italian pianist.
The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia is one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, founded by the papal bull Ratione congruit, issued by Sixtus V in 1585, which invoked two saints prominent in Western musical history: Gregory the Great, for whom the Gregorian chant is named, and Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Since 2005 it has been headquartered at the Renzo Piano designed Parco della Musica in Rome.
The Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia is an Italian symphony orchestra based in Rome. Resident at the Parco della Musica, the orchestra primarily performs its Rome concerts in the Sala Santa Cecilia.
Árpád Joó was a Hungarian American conductor and concert pianist.
Riccardo Brengola was an Italian violinist and professor. He was associated with early Italian chamber music and with the performance of contemporary Italian classical music. For several decades, he was the Professor Emeritus of chamber music at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, and from 1939 to 1966, he was the leader of the only piano quintet ensemble, the Quintetto Chigiano. His influence as a teacher also spread beyond Siena, through courses or classes at other major Italian Conservatories and to Ireland, Argentina, Spain and Japan. He maintained his career as a concert violin soloist and as an orchestral conductor, and was awarded the status of Commendatore of the Italian Republic in 1982.
Horacio Lavandera is an Argentine pianist, currently residing in Madrid, Spain. As its youngest competitor at the age of sixteen, he won the International Piano Competition Umberto Micheli, held at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatoire and in Teatro alla Scala in Milan. He has been invited to perform as a soloist with prestigious orchestras, as well as to offer recitals in America, Europe, and Asia.
Bruno Giuranna is an Italian violist.
Mario Zafred was an Italian composer, music critic, and opera director. He also served as the president of various Italian music conservatories including the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Felix Ayo Losada was a Spanish-born Italian violinist. He was a founder of the Italian ensemble I Musici and of the Quartetto Beethoven di Roma. He played in major concert halls of the world as a soloist and especially as a chamber musician. In a career that spanned more than fifty years, he was a prolific recording artist, and an academic teacher.
Filippo Maria Bressan is an Italian conductor.
Lucio Gregoretti is an Italian composer. He composed stage operas, symphonic and chamber music, electro-acoustic music, as well as incidental music for theatre plays, musical comedies, and film scores.
Giovanni Bellucci is an Italian pianist.
The Orchestra Mozart or Orchestra Mozart Bologna is an Italian orchestra based in Bologna.
Paolo Restani is an Italian classical pianist.
Mariangela Vacatello is an Italian classical concert pianist from Naples.
Sylvia Haydée Kersenbaum is an Argentine pianist, composer and teacher. Among other things, she is recognized for performing the complete cycle of 32 Beethoven piano sonatas twice, and her music for the ballet The Masque of the Red Death, based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe.
Ivan Vihor Krsnik Cohar, known also as only Ivan Vihor, is a Croatian classical pianist and chess player. He is the winner of the 2017 "Premio delle Arti", the most important Italian piano competition.
Leonora Armellini is an Italian pianist.