Pietro de Maria (Italy)

After receiving the Critics’ Prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1990), Pietro De Maria won First Prize in other prestigious international piano competitions, such as the Dino Ciani – Teatro La Scala in Milan (1990), the Géza Anda in Zurich (1994), and the Mendelssohn Award in Hamburg (1997).

An active concert pianist, he has played as soloist with the best known orchestras, with conductors of the stature of Roberto Abbado, Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, Gary Bertini, Myung-Whun Chung, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Daniele Gatti, Alan Gilbert, Eliahu Inbal, Marek Janowski, Ton Koopman, Michele Mariotti, Ingo Metzmacher, Gianandrea Noseda, Corrado Rovaris, Yutaka Sado, Sándor Végh and Jonathan Webb.

Born in Venice in 1967, De Maria studied piano with Giorgio Vianello and Gino Gorini. Revealing a precocious talent, he won First Prize at the Alfred Cortot International Piano Competition in Milan at the age of 13. He graduated from the Conservatory of Venice and continued his studies with Maria Tipo at the Conservatory of Geneva, where he obtained the Premier Prix de Virtuosité with the highest honours in 1988.

His repertory ranges from Bach to Ligeti and he is the first Italian pianist to have played Chopin’s complete piano works in six public concerts. More recently, he has been focusing on Bach, presenting both books of The Well-Tempered Clavier as well as the Goldberg Variations in his concerts.

He has recorded Chopin’s complete piano works, The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations for Decca, receiving important acknowledgments from international publications of prestige such as Diapason, International Piano, MusicWeb-International and Pianiste. His next project will be to perform Beethoven’s entire production of Sonatas and Concertos.

Pietro De Maria is Academic of Santa Cecilia and teaches at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and at the Academy of Music in Pinerolo.