Luca Ciammarughi

Luca Ciammarughi is a concert pianist, radio presenter and musicologist. Since 2007 he has been on air every day on Radio Classica: his programme "Il pianista" has become a reference point in the Italian classical music scene. He writes for the monthly magazines MUSICA, Classic Voice, Suonare News and Corriere del Ticino. He is the editorial director of ClassicaViva and collaborates as radio host with RadioMCA and Venice Classic Radio. Since 2018 he's artistic consultant of Milano Classica and, since 2020, artistic director of the Festival "Pianosofia" at “Casa degli Artisti” in Milano.He wrote for Zecchini Editore the books Da Benedetti Michelangeli alla Argerich - Trent'anni con i grandi pianisti and Soviet Piano – I pianisti dalla rivoluzione d'ottobre alla guerra fredda. For LIM of Lucca he wrote the monograph Le ultime sonate di Schubert - Contesto Testo Interpretazione, for ClassicaViva the essay Franz Schubert - Le sonate di gioventù. For Ponte alle Grazie he wrote in 2020 the book Gli indispensabili. 30 piano masterpieces to listen to at least once in your life. For ETS editions in Lucca he wrote three essays in the volumes I canti dell'ultimo Schumann and Tra poeti maledetti e cabaret, both edited by Guido Salvetti, president of Società Italiana di Musicologia. He studied piano at the Conservatorio G. Verdi in Milan, graduating with top marks and honours in the class of Paolo Bordoni and then obtaining, with honourable mention, the academic diploma in vocal chamber music in the class of Stelia Doz and the academic diploma in piano level II. She furthered her study of Lieder with Dalton Baldwin, obtaining the First Prize as a duo with the soprano Sakiko Abe at the "Città di Conegliano" Competition (jury president Regina Resnik). At the Civica Scuola di Musica "Claudio Abbado" in Milan she attended Renato Rivolta's Modern and Contemporary Music Workshop. He also took lessons with Fou Ts'Ong, Paul Badura-Skoda and Jacques Rouvier. He has written 29 entries for the Guida alla musica da concerto by Zecchini Editore and essays on Schumann's Lieder and the mélodies of Poulenc and Debussy (ETS). He has also written CD notes for labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, Sony, Warner Classics and others, and concert programmes for some of the most important Italian concert institutions, including the Teatro alla Scala, Filarmonica della Scala, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari and Ravenna Musica. Often engaged in concert-lessons, he has recently held piano lectures on Hervé's Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde, Martinů's Mirandolina, Cilea's Gina, Rossini's Il signor Bruschino and Massenet's Werther in the Sale Apollinee of the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and a meeting on Wagner's Ring for students of Aesthetics at the Università degli Studi of Milano. He collaborated as pianist and musical consultant to the realization of the cartoon Max & Maestro (Premio Abbiati 2019: among the motivations, "the ratings selected by Luca Ciammarughi, well managed in the narrative plot"), which has among its protagonists Daniel Barenboim, broadcast by several European and international state TVs, including RAI. He composed the music for the short films Elsa's kitchen and Anna and Marcel, screened at the Centre Pompidou in Paris during the ASVOFF Festival. He has written CD librettos for Deutsche Grammophon (box Hermann Scherchen), Decca (box Pierre Monteux, Andrá Schiff), Sony Classical (Andrea Bacchetti, Francesco Mazzonetto), Warner Classics (Trio Kanon, Giulio Tampalini), Brilliant Classics (Costantino Catena, Wolf-Ferrari; Trio Carducci, Anton Arensky; Cosimo Carovani). For the Limen Music label he wrote the notes for a cd by guitarist Emanuele Segre and a cd+dvd by Yulia Berinskaya and Stefano Ligoratti. For Ulysses Arts he wrote the notes for the cd "Highlands & Sea" (from Monteverdi to Arvo Pärt), by Laura Catrani and Claudio Astronio. For Bongiovanni he wrote the notes for Giorgio Farina's CD dedicated to Cramer's Etudes. In 2019 he produced a series of 9 lessons-concerts on the forms of classical music at the Palazzina Liberty in Milan. In 2020 his book on Franz Schubert came out on newsstands, attached to the newspaper La Repubblica for the Impronte Musica series. He has taught Vocal Chamber Music at the "Antonia Pozzi" Civic School in Corsico. He has held seminars on piano interpretation at the Accademia Prenaeste in Rome, the Civico Istituto Musicale "Brera" in Novara, the Accademia "Marziali" in Seveso and the Civica Scuola di Musica "Beniamino Gigli" in Recanati. In autumn 2020 he gave a lecture on Beethoven's Piano Sonatas at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome for the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. With tenor Blagoj Nacoski he performed Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin live streaming in autumn 2020 for the festival 'Viterbo in musica'. He also played piano in the orchestra during BookCity Milano with La Fil conducted by Marco Seco and the soprano Carmela Remigio. His critical edition of Mario Castelnuovo's Greeting Cards for piano is currently being published by Edizioni Ricordi. For four years he collaborated with the television station Classica HD as a presenter and text editor. From 2010 to 2012 he was artistic director of the Festival "Settimana in musica" in Clusone. He published for Da Vinci Classics a Schubert CD for four hands with Stefano Ligoratti, with whom he forms a piano duo; in December 2017 a solo CD was released for the monthly Suonare Records, with music by Rameau and Schubert. In autumn 2018 he released two CDs for Concerto Classics: "Nel salotto di Casella" (5 stars from the magazine "Rivista Musica": "In Luca Ciammarughi's pianism there is clarity of thought and originality nourished by deep culture") and "The sound of Picasso" (5 stars from the magazine "Amadeus": "A successful disc for the skill of its performers, for the choice of pieces and for the excellent work of transcription that alternates with pages for piano solo, such as Stravinsky's Piano Rag Music. Luca Ciammarughi also wrote the interesting and widely circulated essay accompanying the disc, Picasso e la musica: un'introduzione). He has given lectures and concerts at the Conservatories of Verona, Novara, Piacenza, Milano, Modena/Carpi, Bari, Monopoli and Foggia, as well as at the Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali in Lucca. In 2019 he gave a lecture on the violist and composer Alessandro Rolla at the Teatro alla Scala. In 2018 he gave a talk on classical music in the era of social media within the conference "La critica e la divulgazione musicale in Italia: stato e prospettive". He also gave a series of lectures for the "Bartolomeo Cristofori" Festival in Padua and for the Alkan Prize. In 2009 he was co-author, main actor and pianist in the play "L'ultima Sonata", dedicated to the figure of Franz Schubert (SpazioTeatro89, Milan). In 2019 he was invited by Alexander Lonquich and Cristina Barbuti to hold a meeting on French Baroque (Couperin and Rameau) at KantorAtelier (Florence). He has been a guest on Radio Tre Rai several times ("La Stanza della Musica", "Piazza Verdi" and "Radio Tre Suite") performing live music by Byrd, Purcell, Rameau, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Schubert, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Granados, Debussy, Chausson, Cervantes, Emmanuel, Hahn, Rota, Satie, Stravinsky, Schnittke. He performed at the "Paolo Grassi" Theatre in Cisternino, with Francesco Libetta, Scipione Sangiovanni and Emanuele Delucchi, the first Concertante Quartet by Carl Czerny and the Invitation à la valse by Weber/Godowsky. In 2018-2019 he organised for Piano City Milano the complete Sonatas and Dances of Schubert, taking part in the performance. He recently made a video dedicated to Gustav Mahler's Das himmlische Leben in duo with soprano Liudmila Zhiltsova, directed by Alvise Tedesco. His Schubertian recordings for ClassicaViva have received enthusiastic reviews ("Lyricism, beauty of sound, intimism and tragicism, combined in a coherent and emotional narrative" according to Riccardo Risaliti. "The young Brendel, in 1962, was much more neutral", according to Luca Segalla). Pianist Eric Heidsieck described his interpretation of Schubert's Sonata D 894 as 'sublime', 'bathed in a light comparable to that of 15th-century painters'. Dino Villatico, about Sonata D 960, wrote that 'the hands flow from one point to another with fluid naturalness, as if even the most violent contrasts represented the inescapable mutability of the narrative path. [...] the music becomes a tale'. Giovanni Gavazzeni compared his figure as a music critic to that of Giulio Confalonieri. Paolo Isotta, in his book Altri canti di Marte, wrote: "Ciammarughi's interpretations are of a very high level and put into practice a timbre research that can be conceived only by an artist born in the 20th century". Luigi Fait dedicated an article to his ClassicaViva blog, defining Ciammarughi as a "brilliant pianist and critic". Quirino Principe wrote about him in the Sunday edition of Sole24Ore: 'You can be thirty-six years old and have a long history of refinement in evaluation'. Gian Paolo Minardi stated that 'the interpreter's commitment is fruitfully intertwined with that of the critic, the scholar, the communicator, under the sign of a subtle restlessness that transpires from the writing itself, a prehensibility that radiates in many reverberations, hyperboles, lightning incursions into other poetic terrains'. As a concert pianist he has performed for the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Mito Settembre Musica, Autunno Musicale in Como, Taormina Arte, La Verdi, Mantova Chamber Music Festival (all editions since its foundation), Società dei Concerti in Milan, Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, Festival Guadalquivir in Spain, SIXE/European Union Youth Orchestra, Salle Cortot in Paris, Teatro Verdi in Pordenone, FLOEMA-Orchestra Leonore, Piccolo Teatro Grassi in Milan, Festival Liederiadi, Piano City Milano (all editions), ClassicAperta by MiTo Onlus, International Festival of Portogruaro, Accademia Musicale Pescarese, Amici del Loggione del Teatro alla Scala, Triennale di Milano, SpazioTeatro89, Amici della Musica di Sondalo, Palazzo Farnese in Piacenza, Sala Maffeiana in Verona, Teatro di Villa Torlonia in Rome, Barletta Piano Festival, Sala degli Arazzi of Palazzo Reale in Pisa, Società Umanitaria in Milan, International Piano Festival Città di Morbegno, Teatro Lirico di Magenta, Atelier Carlo Colla & figli, Monteverdi Tuscany, Festival Mugellini, Festival of Bellagio and Lake Como, Youth Orchestra of Lake Maggiore, LivornoClassica, the Museum of Music in Bologna, Barletta Piano Festival, Enoarmonie in Friuli, PianoLab in Martina Franca, Piano City Napoli, Musica a Villa Durio, Madesimo Music Festival, Affetti sonori" review at the University of Turin, Concerts in the Cloister of the Conservatory of Milan, Brahms in Milan (Marco Budano Association), Masada Classica, Auditorium of the Foundation of Piacenza and Vigevano, VaresEstense Festival, Musica in Corte in Crema, Festival "Margola" by the Chamber Orchestra of Brescia, Museo Bagatti Valsecchi, Festival "Amfiteatrof" in Levanto, La Settimana Classica in Ghilarza and many other institutions. With the ensemble SIXE (Suono Italiano per l'Europa) he won the "Cosima Liszt" Prize of the Autunno Musicale in Como, on the occasion of the celebrations for the centenary of the birth of Dallapiccola and Petrassi (2004).