From Sunday 25 September to Saturday 1 October an exceptional musical event will be held in Palazzo Contucci, Montepulciano. Malcolm Bilson, the world famous concert soloist, scholar and teacher, considered one of the founding fathers of the renaissance of the fortepiano, will celebrate the unveiling of the splendid Conrad Graf fortepiano, recently restored. The instrument was made between 1826 an 1828 and has been in the Contucci family ever since.

Maestro Bilson will celebrate the return home of the fortepiano after many long months in Edwin Beunk’s laboratory in Holland (www.fortepiano.nl) by giving two concerts and a series of master-classes. Two concerts, on Sunday 25 September and Saturday 1 October, will round off a week of master-classes from Monday 26 – Friday 30 September. Both the master-classes and concerts will be held in Palazzo Contucci, built in the first half of the Sixteenth century by Antonio da Sangallo il Vecchio, in the beautiful Salone delle Feste, frescoed in 1702 by Andrea Pozzo. Information concerning access to and bookings for the two concerts will be available shortly, but seating is extremely limited. Only a very small number of musicians, preferably professionals, will be admitted to take part in the master-classes. Participants will be selected by Maestro Bilson on the basis of the curriculum vitae submitted. If an admission test is required it will be held on Sunday 25 September. The organizers will inform candidates of their selection and will communicate the time and place of the classes.

It will also be possible for external students to attend the master-classes as auditors. Certificates will be issued at the end of the week attesting the participation of all students who have attended the entire course of master-classes. Applications should be sent to M° Carlo Cavalletti, via Cortina d’Ampezzo 152, 00135 Roma (tel: + 39 335 6771818, e-mail: carlo.cavalletti@fastwebnet.it), and must include: full name, date and place of birth, address, telephone number and e-mail address. Course participants must attach a curriculum vitae with qualifications, education and, if relevant, teaching or concert experience, as well as a list of performance pieces to be played at the musical admission test (if necessary) and during the course.

More informations: www.contucci.it/fortepiano.en.php

MALCOLM BILSON has been in the forefront of the period instrument movement since the early 1970s. His performances of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert on late 18th- and early 19th-century pianos have been key contributions to the restoration of the fortepiano to the concert stage and to recordings of the ‘mainstream’ repertory. He has brought fresh insights to the interpretation of the piano works of those masters in solo, chamber music, and concertos. Malcolm Bilson teaches at the Eastman School of Music and at Cornell University (1968-), where he was named Frederick J. Whiton Professor of Music in 1990. He is a former faculty member of the University of Illinois (1962-1968). Bilson received a bachelor’s degree from Bard College; Reifezeugnis from Vienna State Academy; Licence Libre from Ecole Normale de Musique (Paris); a master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Illinois-Urbana; and an honorary doctor of arts from Bard College. A Fulbright Award allowed for studies in Vienna (1957-1959). Bilson was first prize winner of the Rudolph Ganz Biennial Award for pianists in 1963, and is a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Bilson teaches and lectures extensively around the world. He has given workshops and master classes at the University of California; the Paris, Oberlin, and Peabody Conservatories; the Juilliard School; the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki; Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest; the Music Academies of Oslo, Stockholm, Tokyo, and Hong Kong; in Italy and Belgium; and at the Jerusalem Music Centre. Bilson divides his varied concert appearances among solo performances, chamber music, lieder recitals, and orchestra concerts. He is a frequent soloist with leading early instrument orchestras at festivals such as Mostly Mozart in New York City, the Salzburg Mozartwoche, and the Budapest Early Music Weeks. He often tours with cellist Anner Bylsma, recently visiting Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Paris, and Stavanger (Norway).
Bilson has recorded the three most important cycles of works for piano by Mozart: the Piano Concertos with John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists for Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv; the solo Piano Sonatas for Hungaroton; and the Piano-Violin Sonatas with Sergiu Luca for Nonesuch; along with numerous other solo and chamber music discs for various labels. He has toured extensively with the English Baroque Soloists with John Eliot Gardiner; the Academy of Ancient Music with Christopher Hogwood; the Philharmonia Baroque under Nicolas McGegan; Tafelmusik of Toronto; and Concerto Köln, in addition to other early and modern instrument orchestras around the world.
Since the mid-1980s Bilson has been focusing his attention increasingly on the piano literature of the 19th century. With the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Monteverdi Choir (also under John Eliot Gardiner) he has presented Schubert in London. Works of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms figure prominently in his most recent European and U.S. tours. The Piano-Cello Sonatas of Beethoven with Anner Bylsma are on the Nonesuch label, and his transversal of the Schubert Piano sonatas on period pianos for Hungaroton (including the so-called ‘incomplete sonatas’) is nearly finished. For Deutsche Grammophon, a disc of Schubert’s four-hand music with Robert Levin appeared in November 1997.
In fall 1994, Bilson and six of his former artist-pupils presented Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas in New York City, the first time these works had ever been given as a cycle on period instruments. According to the New York Times, “What emerged in these performances was an unusually clear sense of how revolutionary these works must have sounded in their time.” In 1996 the group recorded the series for the Claves label, and it has since been presented in Florence and Palermo.