Biography

Ottavia Maria Maceratini was born in Recanati, Italy, in 1986. She took her first piano lessons with Ermanno Beccacece at the age of five at the ‘Civica Scuola di Musica Beniamino Gigli’ in Recanati. Between 1997 and 2005, she was a student of Maestro Lorenzo di Bella. She graduated from the Italian Conservatoire with the highest grade. From 2005, she was studying at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich with Prof. Elisso Wirssaladze to whom she owes her refinement as a pianist. She completed her postgraduate Master Class degree in June 2010. Since 2010, she has been preparing her programmes with the conductor Christoph Schlüren.

She is the First Prize winner of 28 Italian piano competitions.

In 2003, she won the ‘Premio delle Arti’ prize competition offered by the Ministry of Education to all Italian conservatoires, and appeared in Rome at the ‘Auditorium Santa Cecilia’.
She has given concerts with various orchestras and performed as a soloist, inter alia, in Rome, Milan, Munich, Berlin, Verona, Tbilisi, and Florence.
In June 2012, she was chosen as pianist for ‘Chamber Music Connects the World’ in Kronberg and performed, amongst others, with Gidon Kremer and Steven Isserlis. On 7^th July 2012, she gave her debut with the Munich Chamber Orchestra performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C major KV 415 at the Oleg Kagan Music Festival in Kreuth. On 13^th October 2012, she made a debut stepping in for Anna Gourari at Elmau Castle. On 28^th February 2013, she performed at a state reception hosted by the German Federal President Joachim Gauck for the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano at Bellevue Palace in Berlin. And in July 2013, she played as a soloist at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival with the KremerataBaltica and Gidon Kremer.

In a review of her performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major KV 488 with the Bad Reichenhall Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Thomas J. Mandl, published in the Reichenhall daily paper ReichenhallerTagblatt, it said, inter alia: “(...) As a musician, she impressed with her amazing maturity, expressed not only in the refinement of sound, virtuosic brilliance and an extraordinary awareness of phrasing and articulation, but also in her calm and light appearance. At the same time, her overwhelming and sweeping energy, felt throughout the entire piece, makes her approach the piano like a lion and unleashes such elemental forces in Mozart’s music which refute any stereotypes but, indeed, go hand in hand with great delicateness and always preserve their transparency and clear structure. What makes stand out Maceratini’s play from the conventions of our time is the incredibly agile and weightless art of articulating which is never sacrificed to the natural primitiveness of accentuating the main beats. (...)”

In November 2011, she recorded her debut CD ‘One Cut’ on which the most diverse styles and expressive spectra, ranging from the Baroque period up to the 20^th century, are related to each other in a highly diversified programme. The album includes the world premiere recording of Heinz Tiessen’s ‘Notturno tempestoso’ and received ecstatic reviews, inter alia, in the Frankfurt daily paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Bavarian broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk and the Austrian broadcaster ORF, as well as in the specialised media, such as Fono Forum, Crescendo, Klassik heute, or klassik.com.

In her second CD ‘Untitled’, recorded in May 2012, she contrasts three of Robert Schumann’s main works with two French bird miniatures by Rameau and Ravel. ‘Untitled’, inter alia, was highly recommended by the Central German broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk and the Munich daily paper Münchner tz (‘Rose of the Week’), was entered in the Best Albums of the Year by the critics of the professional music journal NMZ, and was also nominated for the ICMA (International Classical Music Award) 2013.

Along with playing music, Ottavia Maria Maceratini pursues yet another passion: Bujinkan, Japanese martial arts, which also includes sword fighting. She likes contrasting in her recital and CD programmes the great classics with unknown masterpieces in a most surprising and dramaturgically convincing manner. As a musician, she always seeks to combine content and form into a coherent experience in which structure and expression blend to form an inseparable unity. At the same time, music is to her a constant new encounter with the unknown, a continuous adventure requiring that full risks be assumed to make sure that the sound will be the same the hundredth time as if it had just arisen for the first time.

(Translation: Th. Henninger)

A portrait of the artist is given by Crescendo, 5.9.2012: http://www.crescendo.de/

See also the pianist's portrait by Gabriele Luster (merkur.online) - "Auf dem Sprung zur Weltkarriere: https://www.gramola.at/

Video

Ottavia Maria Maceratini: Robert Schumann's Fantasie Op. 17, first movement
https://youtu.be/W5qP6LyP5L4

Ottavia Maria Maceratini in a new Music Video
"Toccata" by Aram Khachaturian // Music Video (April 2014)
http://youtu.be/3KNQucQ3ejU

Ottavia Maceratini plays Robert Schumann, Symphonic Etudes, last variation & finale by Aldilà Records
https://soundcloud.com/