Italian pianist Andrea Bacchetti’s recent Dynamic release of the Inventions and Sinfonias of Bach has been named “Disc of the Month” in the September 2009 issue of BBC Music Magazine, an outstanding honor for a young pianist. As the reviewer stated, “There isn’t a dull moment in this album’s two-and-a-half hours; even the simplest pieces . . . turn out to be gems under Bacchetti’s passionate fingers.”
Beyond Bach, Mr. Bacchetti’s repertoire is extensive. He has programmed three centuries of Italian composers: baroque masters such as Muzio Clementi, Baldassare Galuppi, Luigi Cherubini, and Domenico Scarlatti, romantic composers such as Gioachino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi, and from the 20th-century, Luciano Berio. Andrea Bacchetti in fact enjoyed a long-standing relationship with Berio until that composer’s death in 2003. Bacchetti’s disc Berio Piano Works was prepared under Berio’s tutelage and is today considered the “point of reference” for the interpretation of this repertoire.
Upcoming engagements for Andrea Bacchetti include the Serate Musicali Milano, the Società del Quartetto de Vicenza (with tenor Marcello Nardis), the Teatro Grande di Brescia, the Ravenna Festival (with violinist Domenico Nordio), recitals in Venice, the Festival International de Santander, the Murten Classic Festival, the Palazzo del Quirinale, performances in Lima, Peru, and Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador, and tours throughout Sicily and Japan. Upcoming orchestral dates include Mozart concertos in Milan, Nino Rota’s Concerto Soirée with the Orchestra del Teatro Carlo Felice under Marco Guidarini, and the Curitiba Symphony.
Andrea Bacchetti’s musical abilities were apparent by age 5. At 8 he played Beethoven in La Porziuncola di Assisi and his orchestral debut came at age 11 with I Solisti Veneti and Claudio Scimone at the Conservatorio Milano. Formal training took place at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg where he came under the attention of Herbert von Karajan who, much impressed, invited the young prodigy to sit through a rehearsal of the Berlin Philharmonic. Further studies transpired at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris and the Conservatory Niccolò Paganini in Genoa with such luminaries as Nikita Magaloff, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Karlheinz Kämmerling, Sergio Perticaroli, Andrzej Jasinski, Tatiana Nikolaeva, and Sergey Dorenski. In 1996, Mr. Bacchetti took first prize at the “Premio Venezia” International Piano Competition, as well as prizes at the International Competition “Umberto Micheli” in Milan in 2006 and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon for the best rendering of a contemporary piece (Luciano Berio’s Six Encores).
Bacchetti has appeared in recital at the Salle Pleyel and Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Salzburger Festspiele, the Tonhalle Zürich, Konzerthaus Berlin, Teatro Real Madrid, Teatro Coliseo Buenos Aires, and the Gewandhaus Leipzig. Other performance locales include Bucarest, Tirana, São Paulo, Moscow, Bern, Prague, London, Luxembourg, Tokyo, Los Angeles and New York.
Andrea Bacchetti has performed with the Festival Strings Lucerne, the Camerata Academica Salzburg, European Union Chamber Orchestra, the Prague Chamber Orchestra, Salzburg Chamber Soloists, George Enescu Philharmonic, Orchestre Symphonique Français, the Asturias Symphony, L'Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine (ONBA), Orchestre Régional de Cannes-Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, SDKO (Pforzheim), Orquesta Synfonica de Castilla y Leon, Slesiana Philarmonie, and the MDR SinfonieOrchester Leipzig, under the direction of such notable conductors as Rudolf Baumgartner, Aldo Ceccato, Justus Franz, Alain Lombard, Fabio Luisi, Peter Maag, Pier Carlo Orizio, George Pehlivanian, Laurant Petitgirard, Maximiano Valdes, Mario Venzago, Alberto Zedda, and others. Mr. Bacchetti toured with the Comitato Nazionale Italiano Musica’s (CIDIM) Latina 2000 project in South America (with concerts in Buenos Aires, São Paolo, and Santiago), and has performed in Mexico and Japan. In addition to the solo and orchestral repertoire, Mr. Bacchetti is passionately devoted to chamber music, and has performed with Cappella Istropolitana and the Scala, Pražák, and Ysaÿe Quartets.
Mr. Bacchetti has recorded on Decca, Arthaus Musik, Dynamic, Gallo, Arts Productions, and Sony Red Seal. His discography includes the English Suites and Goldberg Variations of Bach (also available on DVD), the piano sonatas of Baldassare Galuppi, Mozart’s Piano Concerto K 414 with the Lucerne Festival Strings, and the piano and orchestra music of Felix Mendelssohn with the Prague Chamber Orchestra. Bacchetti was the first to record the sonatas of Luigi Cheribini on the modern piano. His recently released recording of the Toccatas of Bach on the Dynamic label was just awarded five stars (the highest level) by the prestigious Italian magazine MUSICA, in their July/August 2010 issue. Critical acclaim has been unanimous from such publications as The American Record Guide, International Piano, Diapason, Amadeus, Ritmo, Fono Forum, Crescendo, Luister, Musik & Theater, Pizzicato, Le Monde de la Musique, and others.
Andrea Bacchetti was born in Recco on the Italian Riviera and now lives in Genoa.
June 2010
