Costantino Mastroprimiano

Specializing in nineteenth-century repertoire—an area seldom emphasized by historical keyboard specialists—the Italian fortepianist Costantino Mastroprimiano has concentrated on composers including Muzio Clementi, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Jan Ladislav Dussek, Johann Baptist Cramer, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Carl Czerny, Ignaz Moscheles, and Ferdinand Ries. His performances draw extensively on personal investigations into period instruments and historical performance practices. Born October 28, 1964, in Foggia, Italy, he completed initial training at the city’s conservatory before pursuing advanced piano and chamber-music instruction at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, receiving diplomas there in 1984 and 1985. Examination of early piano treatises prompted him to recover compositions by the aforementioned figures and additional writers, together with previously unpublished keyboard reductions of orchestral scores by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; he likewise participated on the editorial committee that issued Clementi’s complete works. Engagements have taken him to major Italian centers as well as abroad to France, Bulgaria, and Austria, while concerto solo appearances in Italy have included performances with the Perugia Symphony Orchestra and other ensembles. In 1996 he presented what was likely the first fortepiano account of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, at the San Gimignano Festival. Chamber-music activity regularly involves the Hausmusikensemble and Concert sans Orchestre. His discography comprises complete cycles of the keyboard works of both Clementi and Hummel, plus period-instrument recordings of music by Chopin and Alkan; the Hummel cycle appeared in full on the Brilliant label in 2018. Mastroprimiano teaches at the Accademia Europea Villa Bossi in Bodio Lomnago, Lombardy, and holds a chamber-music post at the University of Perugia, having also served as guest professor at the National Academy of Music in Sofia, Bulgaria.