Giovanni Bellucci
Giovanni Bellucci (born Rome, 31 August 1965) is an Italian pianist. After having inadvertently discovered the piano, when he was already fourteen, he started studying at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome under the direction of Franco Medori. After having taken his degree "summa cum laude" and honourable mention, he was awarded a "Master" at the Accademia Pianistica in Imola. As a result, he could subsequently claim amongst his contacts artists of the stature of Paul Badura-Skoda, Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, and Maurizio Pollini. His recording of Franz Liszt's Paraphrases of Verdi and Bellini operas was  included in "Diapason" magazine's selection of the all-time top 10 Liszt recordings. Apart from Bellucci, the music critic Alain Lompech only took into consideration artists such as Martha Argerich, Claudio Arrau, Aldo Ciccolini, Gyorgy Cziffra, Wilhelm Kempff, and Krystian Zimerman. For the British magazine "Gramophone", Bellucci is an artist born into the great Italian tradition and brought up to it – a tradition historically represented by Busoni, Zecchi, Michelangeli, Ciani, Pollini. "He takes us back to the golden age of the piano", declared the daily "Le Monde" in highlighting Bellucci's success in the World Piano Masters Competition in  Montecarlo 1996 – the last in a lengthy series of successes in international competitions (from the Queen Elisabeth in Brussels to the "Prague Spring", from the RAI "Casella" to the "C. Kahn" in Paris, from the "Busoni" to the "Franz Liszt"). In 2005, he received the award "Recital of the year" after his first concert tour in Australia. All his CDs, published by Decca, Warner Classics, Accord-Universal, Opus 106, Assai, and Danacord, have been awarded by specialist publications: "Choc de l'année" by the Classical magazine "Répertoire" and "CHOC" of "Le Monde de la musique" in France, UK "Gramophone"s "Editor's  choice", "5 Stars" from Musica, "5 stars" from the "BBC Music Magazine", "Cd exceptionnel" from "Répertoire", "ffff" from "Télérama", "Best Cd" from the magazine "Suono", etc. The recording company Universal has published the complete Hungarian Rhapsodies S. 244 by Franz Liszt (with a double CD including a rare work, such as the Romanian Rhapsody S. 242) and the CD "Chopin Métamorphoses", where Bellucci played some works as world premiere, like the Concerto No. 1 by Chopin/Tausig and the Polonaise, Op. 53 "Heroic" by Chopin/Busoni.