Vincenzo Maltempo

The artistic personality of Vincenzo Maltempo has gained an important place in the heterogeneous contemporary music scene thanks to his demanding work of rediscovery of the music of Charles Valentin Alkan, of which he is now considered as one of the most authoritative interpreters and connoisseurs in the world. This remarkable work has attracted the attention of the most renowned international magazines such as «Diapason», «The Guardian», «PianoNews», «Gramophone» and many others. Andrew Clements («The Guardian») defines him «exciting, a real revelation!», and Robert Nemececk («PianoNews») writes: «considered one of the greatest contemporary interpreters of this composer [Alkan], no other pianist like Maltempo has managed to dominate in so well thought out and orchestral way the enormous difficulties of his music». Maltempo has recorded and played Alkan’s most important works and is one of the very few performers to have played the entire collection of his colossal Douze études dans toutes les tons mineurs op. 39 in a single recital, in Yokohama, in 2013. As a result of his continuous work of rediscovery and promotion of Alkan’s music he has been named an honorary member of the “Alkan Society” of London. In 2019 he began his collaboration with the prestigious G. Henle Verlag. In 2020 he publishes a voluminous biography on Alkan, the first in Italian language (Florestano, 2020).

Maltempo can count in his discography, in addition to five CDs with works by Alkan (collected in 2014 in a box set by Piano Classics), numerous other titles: to Liszt he dedicated two CDs, “Klavierwerke” (Gramola, 2009) and “The complete Hungarian Rhapsodies” (Piano Classics, 2016), a double CD nominated by «Gramophone» as “Editor’s choice” and defined as «the most beautiful integral I have ever heard» by Paul Ruckert in his review of the album in the same magazine; to Schumann (Piano Classics, 2014) a CD with some of his most important piano works; while to the music of Lyapunov (Piano Classics, 2017) he devoted an important recording of the 12 Transcendental Studies, which is added to the very few previous complete recording in existence and which earns 5-star reviews on «Diapason» and on other Italian and foreign magazines. In 2018, and again for Piano Classics, a double CD was released with the two Piano Concertos by Brahms, recorded live with the Mitteleuropa Orchestra conducted by Marco Guidarini, while in 2019 for the same label was issued a double CD with the 10 Piano Sonatas by Skrjabin (Maltempo is the first Italian in history to record the complete set) and in 2020, the complete Bagatelles by Beethoven, together with the Diabelli Variations, the Variations op. 34, and the “Eroica” Variations.

Recent engagements include concerts for the Società Aquilana dei Concerti Bruno Barattelli, RAI Radio Tre’s “Concerti al Quirinale,” the Amici della Musica di Perugia, the Associazione Scarlatti in Naples, and the International Piano Series in Freiburg, as well as complete recordings for Piano Classics of the piano music of Dukas (2023) and Chopin’s Nocturnes (2024), and a double CD dedicated to Brahms (2026) featuring the Ballades op. 10, Variations op. 21 no. 1, the 8 Klavierstücke op. 76, and opp. 116–119.

His musical career, which began spontaneously at a very early age in his family, is strongly influenced by Salvatore Orlando, pianist and teacher, a pupil of Sergio Fiorentino, with whom he graduated in 2005 at the S. Cecilia Conservatory in Rome with summa cum laude. He continues his studies with Riccardo Risaliti at the International Piano Academy “Incontri col Maestro” in Imola, where he has the opportunity to attend masterclasses with pianists such as V. Ashkenazy, O. Marshev, R. Levin, Z. Kocsis and others.

Winner of the 2006 Venice Prize at the La Fenice Theater, his international concert career sees him perform from that point in the most important festivals and theaters in Europe (Venice La Fenice, Cagliari Teatro Lirico, Spoleto “Festival dei due Mondi”, Festival F. Liszt in Raiding, “Raritäten der Klaviermusik” in Husum), America (Miami “International Piano Festival”), Mexico (“Festival Internacional de Piano en Blanco y Negro”), Asia.

His piano transcriptions are published by Ries & Erler in Berlin and by MusePress in Tokyo.

Since 2017 he has been the founder and artistic director of the International Piano Competition “Alkan Prize for piano virtuosity”.

He currently lives in Turin where he teaches at the local Conservatory of Music.