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Benedetto Lupo, pianist

b i o g r a p h y...........back to roster....up June 2010 Benedetto Lupo has been described by critics as an "exceptionally fine pianist ... who has a remarkably fine touch and beautiful tone control" (The Oregonian). Praised for his "keen musical intelligence and probing intellect" (Miami Herald), and for combining "meticulous technique with romantic sensitivity" (Birmingham News), he has gained worldwide recognition. After winning the bronze medal in the 1989 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, he made acclaimed debuts with several major American orchestras, as well as chamber appearances with the Tokyo String Quartet. His New York City recital debut at Alice Tully Hall followed in 1992, the same year he won the Terence Judd International Award, which in turn led to his debut at London's Wigmore Hall. Lupo’s next season focuses on three anniversaries: He celebrates Liszt’s 200th birthday by performing Concerto No. 1 and Totentanz with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, Verdi Orchestra in Milan and Austin Symphony. As a prominent proponent of Nino Rota he plays the Concerto Soirée on occasion of the composer’s 100th birthday with the Spanish National Orchestra in Madrid as well as other European orchestras. And he will join other noted pianists in celebration of the Liege Philharmonic’s 50th anniversary. Other appearances during the season bring him together with the NWD Philharmonie, Northern Sinfonia, Les Violons du Roy, and the symphonies of Bilbao, Lecce, and Phoenix. The 09/10 season continued the array of debuts with key orchestras in the US. He made his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Jurowski, as well as the symphonies of Colorado, San Antonio, Virginia and Kansas City. Overseas, he was heard with the Stuttgart Philharmonic, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome under Kent Nagano, the Orchestra Verdi in Milan and on a tour of the Tuscany region with the ORT Orchestra. Other concert appearances included San Remo (Italy), Limburg (Netherlands), Odense (Denmark) and with the Orquesta Sinfonica de Navarra (Spain). Season 2008/09 brought two more milestones in his career: his New York orchestral debut with the Mostly Mozart Festival and a subscription debut with the Chicago Symphony. He also appeared with the Eugene Symphony, and in Europe with the Liège Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic and several Italian orchestras, as well as in a recital tour across Italy. 2007/08 was another season filled with important engagements. He reunited with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig under Vladimir Jurowski, performing Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand, and later performed Ravel’s other piano concerto with the London Philharmonic at Royal Festival Hall. He also appeared with the Bilbao Symphony, Aarhus Symphony, Stuttgart Philharmonic in Milan and the RAI Orchestra in Turino. In the US, he collaborated with the symphonies of Sarasota, Honolulu, Austin and Alabama. Prior highlights included the Cliburn Concert Series in Ft. Worth, the opening of the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli Festival of Brescia and Bergamo with Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy under Sir Neville Marriner, and touring with the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski to Bucharest, Merano, Verona, and Zagreb. He also appeared repeatedly with the symphonies of Montreal, Vancouver, Seattle, St. Louis, Utah, Oregon, Columbus, Jacksonville, Tucson, Louisiana, Huntsville, Charlotte, and the Hallé, Bergen (Norway) and Slovak philharmonic orchestras. He performed at numerous music festivals worldwide, including the Tivoli in Copenhagen, the Villa Medici in Rome, the Chopin Festival in Poland, the Schubert Festivals in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and Chicago's Grant Park Festival. His recordings include an acclaimed version of Nino Rota's Concerto Soirée with the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana on the Nuova Era label, and a new recording of the same work on Harmonia Mundi for which he received the prestigious Diapason d’Or award. With Peter Maag and the RSI Symphony Orchestra he has recorded Schumann's complete works for piano and orchestra, including the first CD recording of the piano version of Konzertstück, op. 86, for the Arts label. Benedetto Lupo teaches at the Nino Rota Conservatory in Italy, gives master classes around the world, and has served on the jury of both the Cleveland International Competition and the Gina Bachauer Competition in Salt Lake City, from which he previously won second and third prize, respectively. He is featured on the Emmy-award winning documentary Here to Make Music: The Eighth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and the seven-part series Encore! The Final Round of Performances of the Eighth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, both for PBS. b i o.. ...r e v i e w s back to roster...up . . . .

. r e v i e w s...........back to roster....up Chicago Symphony (debut) (Bernard Labadie, cond.) The Italian Benedetto Lupo won the bronze medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition 20 years ago and has stayed below the radar since then. He seems to have used the time wisely. His playing in Mozart's B-Flat Major Piano Concerto No. 18, K. 456 was beautiful. Each choice was elegant without a whiff of pretension. Labadie rightly followed Lupo's lead with the orchestra. It would be a pleasure to hear him again. – Chiago Sun-Times, 5/30/09 Benedetto Lupo, who gave a beautiful, shapely, unaffected account of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-Flat (K.456), is another artist who had to make his name elsewhere before the CSO beckoned. The Italian pianist, winner of the bronze medal in the 1989 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Ft. Worth, also was appearing with the orchestra for the first time. His pianism was never less than gracious, the musical sensibility behind it generous and true. Labadie's supportive accompaniment had a similar feeling of naturalness, as if he and Lupo were breathing the same pure Mozartean air. I hope the CSO invites both musicians back in the very near future. – Chigago Tribune, 5/29/09 Eugene Symphony Lupo displayed his mastery of this concerto in the first few measures, his use of dynamic contrasts and breathtaking rubato revealing his familiarity with the outer and inner workings of the piece. There were striking contrasts in the pianist’s approach to the fast and slow sections of the movement; and the cadenza was dark and dynamic, building to a huge crashing climax. The Register-Guard, 3/23/09 Mostly Mozart Festival (debut) (Louis Langrée, cond.) In Mozart’s 18th Piano Concerto, K. 456, Langrée, together with the pianist Benedetto Lupo, joined bubbly, infectious joy with musical intelligence. Emphasizing the rhetorical underpinnings of eighteenth-century musical discourse, they pulled lines apart to reveal conflict and contradiction in the succession of phrases and heightened contrasts in tempo, as the orchestra reduced vibrato to heighten harmonic strangeness. Lupo’s crystalline yet emphatic performance helped draw out the piece’s deeper meaning, Mozart’s own underlying conflict between the imperatives of festive public pomp (as seen in the opening theme’s martial strut) and the inner compulsions of personal expression (which Lupo brought out with dark-hued vehemence). –The New Yorker, 8/11/08 Italian pianist Benedetto Lupo did a fine job as soloist, weaving his way through the pages of politically correct declamation and preserving gravitas by re-creating Mozart's original — now rather stuffy — cadenzas. This was a technically adept performance and the orchestra was expertly balanced in its accompaniment […] – The New York Sun, 8/11/08 Alabama Symphony (Giancarlo Guerrero, cond.) Italian pianist Benedetto Lupo, who joined Guerrero the last time the two were in Birmingham, in 2006, soloed in Nino Rota's "Concerto Soiree." An incisive technician with a keen rhythmic instinct, Lupo made perfect sense of this peculiar concerto. Lupo held nothing back, exaggerating the work's flightiness, illuminating its colorful diversions, mastering its candy store of sonic delights. Lupo took firm control in Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, tearing briskly through the jazzy "Allegramente" and producing a heart-melting "Adagio assai" that ended in prayerful solemnity. – The Birmingham News, 3/15/08 Honolulu Symphony (Andreas Delfs, cond.) Guest soloist Benedetto Lupo performed a most unconventional Beethoven, more Classic reserve than Romantic effusion. Instead of the drive, passion, and large-scale developmental syntax so characteristic of Beethoven, his playing focused on exquisite tone: fleeting fairy-light runs, delicate digressions, and singing melodies set off by murmuring pillows of arpeggiated chords. Nary a passion marred the beauty of his playing, which was modulated and smoothly blended throughout, with a refinement and delicacy more akin to Debussy than Beethoven. A pianists' pianist, he had a beautifully quiet technique and seemed most in his element in solo passages and cadenzas. Throughout, Lupo played largely in the moment and almost independently of the orchestra, which served as foil rather than partner. – The Honolulu Advertiser, 12/15/07 Cliburn at the Kimbell recital Mr. Lupo proved a musician of depth and warmth […] Mr. Lupo savored, and subtly underlined, the music's harmonic unpredictability. Both here and in Robert Schumann's Kreisleriana the playing had delectable spontaneity. This is music that should sound almost made up on the spot, and in this case it did, magically. Too often merely a display of well-trained pianism, Kreisleriana here seemed an exploration of soul-states, some fairly extreme. This is music by turns tempestuous and tender, playful and poignant, and Mr. Lupo brought every emotional twist and turn to life. Even ostensibly pleasant music sometimes betrayed unsettling undercurrents. In the second half, Mr. Lupo gave as committed and sympathetic a performance as you'll hear of Tchaikovsky's Sonata No. 2 in G major. He had a sure command of the grandiose rhetoric, as well as of the torrents of notes released in the finale, and he sensitively varied the second movement's "pah-pah" accompaniments. – The Dallas Morning News, 5/2/07 b i o.. ...r e v i e w s back to roster...up . . .

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