Vittorio Ceccanti

Born in 1972, Vittorio Ceccanti began playing the cello at the age of five and studied with Mischa Maisky, David Geringas and Natalia Gutman, graduating with honours as a pupil of Natalia Gutman at the Hochschule fur Musik in Stuttgart. He also attended classes with Yo Yo Ma, Anner Bijlsma and Valentjn Berlinsky. He has studied conducting with Piero Bellugi and Martyn Brabbins. Winner of several international prizes, he made his debut as a soloist at the age of seventeen, performing the Lalo Cello Concerto with the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra (ORF) conducted by Pinchas Steinberg at the Musikverein Saal in Vienna.His performance of the Saint-Saens Cello Concerto at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples,was televised by RAI-TV. Since then, he has been invited to perform regularly as a solo artist in Europe, the Americas and Asia. He has played and conducted innumerable world premieres and has close links with many of today’s foremost composers. He has made a number of recordings including the Beethoven cello sonatas for EMI Classics, Chopin’s complete works for cello and piano and the Trio op.8 as part of the Chopin Edition monography for BRILLIANT Classics, plus the complete works for cello and piano and the cello concerto by Peter Maxwell Davies for NAXOS. He has also recorded both Mendelssohn and Faure?’s complete works for cello and piano with the pianist Bruno Canino on the CD attached to AMADEUS Music Magazine. Professor at the Castelfranco Veneto Conservatory and at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, he has held master classes at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at Cincinnati University. In 2005 he received the silver medal from the President of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.