Vincenzo Marrone D’Alberti, piano

Born in Trapani, Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti stands out among the most interesting pianists and educators of his generation in Italy due to his high level of technical and interpretative specialization and pedagogical skills developed over the last three decades among the leading schools of Central Europe.

After earning his Piano Diploma in 1989 with the highest grades at the Conservatory “A. Scarlatti” (formerly “Vincenzo Bellini”) in Palermo under the guidance of Antonio Fortunato, he continued his artistic training by studying with great personalities of the European concert scene such as Eliodoro Sollima from the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli school, Edith Picht Axenfeld from the Rudolf Serkin school, Elza Kolodin, Irina Edelstein, and Nina Tichman, from the Wilhelm Kempff school.

Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti then studied in Freiburg, from 1988 to 1991, with the great German pianist Edith Picht Axenfeld, considered by international critics as the ambassador of Bach’s music in the world, acquiring and inheriting her Bach performance vision. His training journey continued in 1991 with the Russian pianist Irina Edelstein, at the Musikhochschule in Frankfurt, and from 1992 to 1995 with the American pianist Nina Tichman.

Nina Tichman offered him the highest knowledge of piano technique from the Matthay-Taubman school, opening him up to new artistic experiences in interpreting the great works of the piano literature. It was Tichman who, in July 1993, introduced him to the ‘Taubman school of piano’ at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts – USA, where he studied “Analysis and Motor Coordination” of piano technique with Dorothy Taubman, currently considered by international critics among the leading innovators of piano technique.

His recognized interpretative qualities and profound expressive sensitivity have thus earned him multiple invitations from some of the most important cultural centers both in Italy and abroad, in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Africa.

Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti has performed in special musical events at the Amherst Music Festival-Boston, the Musikhalle in Ludwigsburg (Germany), in Amsterdam (Netherlands) in the Cristofori hall for the “Master Pianists” series, in events organized in Naples by the Pietà de’ Turchini Foundation and in Ancona by the Italian Navy. Numerous concerts held in the 1990s and beyond, for the “Friends of Music of Trapani and Syracuse”, (1997, 2002), for the Festival in Frankfurt am Main in the prestigious Kronberg Castle (1999, 2000) and also had the honor of inaugurating, in 1998, the VII International Competition in Sofia, Bulgaria, with the First Concerto of Bach for two pianos and orchestra. That same year he also debuted as a soloist for the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and, again in Frankfurt but in 2001, he performed in a duo with his sister Giacometta at the Stadel Kunstmuseum and “Villa Giersch museum” for the “International Bankers forum of Frankfurt” and Bankhaus Lampe. In October 1999, Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti was invited to play for the 50th anniversary of the Dutch UNESCO in Amsterdam in the great hall of the Koninklijke Instituut voor de Tropen, in the presence of important representatives of the United Nations and prominent political figures, while, in 2001, at the invitation of the Dutch embassy in Belgium, he represented the Netherlands at the European International Piano Festival of Wallonie, in Brussels.

In February 2002, for the High Finance of Europe, at the invitation of the German Stock Exchange Music Society and the President of the German Stock Exchange Werner Seifert, he played in the great hall of the new Frankfurt Stock Exchange for the leading figures of the European financial world, in front of all the presidents of the Stock Exchanges and Banks of Europe and the Finance Ministers of Germany and Luxembourg.

In November 2004, he was in Ecuador for a concert in the city of Quito for the celebrations of 100 years of diplomatic relations between Ecuador and the Netherlands, while two years later, also in Ecuador, he had the great honor of playing the Concerto in C major K. 415 for piano and orchestra by Mozart with the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ecuador in the grand Sala de la Casa de la Música de Quito to represent the Netherlands on behalf of Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, celebrating her birthday in the presence of some of the highest representations of the political, social, and diplomatic world of South America and Europe.

Great successes were also achieved at the Bach Festivals in Tuttlingen (Stuttgart) and Horb (Freiburg) with the Bach Concertos for two pianos and orchestra in duo with his sister Giacometta, a highly appreciated pianist with whom he also recorded “The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns and, in Frankfurt, two CDs with music by Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Ravel, and Liszt for four hands under the auspices of the German Stock Exchange and the International Bankers Forum. The German press reviews following the concerts performed on the two occasions recognized the piano duo Vincenzo and Giacometta Marrone D’Alberti as world-class pianists. For his concert activity, an important concert held on November 8, 2013, in the Villa Bonn in Frankfurt upon invitation from the president of the Berlin Stock Exchange for the most important cultural society in Europe, the Frankfurter Gesellschaft für Handel, Industrie und Wissenschaft is also noteworthy. The prestige of the personalities who have given luster to this foundation (Albert Einstein, Walter Rathenau, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Ludwig Erhard, Georg Solti, Carlo Schmid, Carl Orff, Theodor Heuss, Willy Brandt, Carola Stern, Henry Kissinger, Angela Merkel) honors Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti, thus recognized among the most acclaimed European pianists of his generation in Frankfurt.

His piano repertoire, particularly broad, ranges from the German Baroque of J.S. Bach to Contemporary music signed by 20th-century composers.

Parallel to his performance career, after teaching Piano in Frankfurt and Amsterdam and also holding numerous master classes in various foreign countries, during the years of his return to Italy, he undertook a teaching activity carried out with rare competence and dedication at important Italian Music Conservatories. The outcomes achieved by his classes are remarkable. He has taught main Piano at the Conservatories of Lecce, Messina, and, after an appointment received from the Conservatorio “Santa Cecilia” in Rome, he was called to the same Chair by the Conservatorio “Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa” in Potenza where his class, recently described by the press as “golden,” records the record of 90 first prizes won in four years among national and international competitions.

Numerous recognitions for Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti’s artistic career include: in April 2008 and again in April 2011, he received the honor from the Dutch Royal Family, through the Dutch Embassies in Mozambique and Bolivia, the invitation to play solo respectively in the two national theaters of Maputo and La Paz on the occasion of the birthday of Sovereign Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in the presence of the diplomatic and political bodies of the two countries, confirming his talent and the notoriety achieved. In the Netherlands, he then received the International European Award from Bechstein, won by competition-audition with the last two Sonatas of Beethoven. On that occasion, the Dutch music critic Ben Daeter included him in the book “Het Klassieke Pianorecital” (the history of classical concertism) highlighting him among the top twenty-five pianists in Europe distinguished for their interpretative abilities in the Netherlands and Belgium. Furthermore, as a culmination of his long and prestigious career: the Plötz Top 500 – International Career Award, thanks to which he was included in the Top 500 book of Frankfurt as a personality among the 300 most important in the city of Frankfurt and Germany and among the best European pianists; the Career Award “Sicanorum Cantica” conferred by the Presidency of the Italian Republic and the Presidency of the Senate; the UNESCO Award for culture and art awarded on December 16, 1998, by the UNESCO Commission of Trapani in the presence of the national UNESCO President, Dr. Maria Luisa Stinga, and the conferment of the honorary appointment as UNESCO Ambassador for the new generations for Western Sicily and the Netherlands. In 2013, the Chamber of Commerce of Trapani and the broadcaster Telesud 3 awarded him the Saturno Career Award as a true excellence of the territory.

Since 2019, Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti has been the Artistic Director of the “Trapani Piano Festival,” an event he himself conceived thanks to the support of the Department of Culture of the Municipality of his City, and this year launched in its first edition with extraordinary success both from the public and critics. In February 2021, he became a Full Professor, holding the chair of Piano at the State Conservatory “A. Scarlatti” in Palermo.