UCLA Abell Piano Masters series with Antonio Pompa-Baldi

Born and raised in Foggia, Italy, Antonio Pompa-Baldi won the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 1999 and embarked on a multifaceted career that continues to extend across five continents.

A top prize winner at the 1998 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition of Paris, France, Antonio Pompa-Baldi also won a silver medal at the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

With a concerto repertoire including more than 60 works, Mr. Pompa-Baldi regularly performs cycles of all the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos, the five Beethoven Piano Concertos, both Brahms Concertos and many other established masterpieces of the piano literature, while also championing neglected or lesser-known repertoire, with leading orchestras around the world.

Mr. Pompa-Baldi appears at major concert venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Milan’s Sala Verdi, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Shanghai’s Grand Theatre, and Paris’ Salle Pleyel, to name a few. He has collaborated with conductors including Hans Graf, Krzysztof Urbánski, James Conlon, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Theodore Kuchar, Benjamin Zander, Louis Lane, and Keith Lockhart. He has performed with ensembles and colleagues such as Takacs String Quartet, trumpeter Alison Balsom, cellist Sharon Robinson, violinists Ivan Zenaty and Ilya Kaler, and principals of the Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Juilliard Quartet.

Among the many stops on his tours, he performed in Vienna (Austria), London (UK), Paris (France), New York (USA), Auckland (New Zealand), Jerusalem (Israel), Kiev (Ukraine), Cape Town (South Africa), Poland, Germany, Mexico, Canada, Spain, and many other places around the globe.

In China alone, Pompa-Baldi has toured extensively in the most prestigious venues of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and all the other major cities, and is a regular returning guest at the Lang Lang piano festivals of Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

Mr. Pompa-Baldi has recorded 35 CDs to date, for various labels including Centaur Records, Harmonia Mundi, Steinway, TwoPianists, Azica, and Brilliant Classics. Among them, the complete piano and chamber music works of Grieg, the Josef Rheinberger Piano Sonatas, the complete Hummel Piano Sonatas, and CDs dedicated to Brahms, Schumann, Liszt, Respighi, and Rachmaninoff.

For the Steinway label, Pompa-Baldi recorded songs by Francis Poulenc and Edith Piaf, arranged for solo piano, as well as a CD titled “Napoli”, which features new piano versions of famous Neapolitan songs, elaborated by Roberto Piana.

Among his latest releases are his transcription for solo piano of the Respighi B minor Violin Sonata, and Suites by Debussy, Luca Moscardi and Barber for piano duo. Recorded with his wife, pianist Emanuela Friscioni, this latest album was published with the title “Suite Nothings” by the Steinway label.

Antonio Pompa-Baldi is a Steinway Artist. He is also a Steinway Recording Artist, as well as one of the most prominently featured artists in the Spirio recording catalogue. He is often invited to judge international piano competitions such as the Cleveland, Hilton Head, E-Competition (Minneapolis), BNDES Rio de Janeiro, Chopin USA (Miami) and Edward Grieg (Bergen), among many others. He serves as president of the jury and artistic advisor for the San Jose International Piano Competition since 2005.

Pompa-Baldi is on the Piano Faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he is also Head of the Piano Department.