Duccio Ceccanti graduated with honours from the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini in Florence and continued his studies with Salvatore Accardo, Felix Andrievsky, Stefan Gheorghiu and Boris Belkin.

At a young age he was invited to perform at venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall and Columbia University in New York, Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires, Auditorium RSI in Lugano, Teatro di San Carlo in Naples and prestigious festivals including Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Biennale di Venezia. He has given premiere performances of works, some dedicated to him, by eminent composers such as Luciano Berio, Krzysztof Penderecki, Luca Francesconi, Peter Maxwell Davies, Luis de Pablo and Henri Pousseur. He performs with Quartetto Klimt and Contempoartensemble, and has made recordings for Brilliant Classics, Naxos, Stradivarius and Amadeus Magazine.

He teaches violin at the Conservatorio Giacomo Puccini, La Spezia and the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole. In 2017 the Accademia Internazionale Medicea awarded him the Laurentian Medal for artistic merit at the 30th edition of the Lorenzo il Magnifico Prize, held at Firenze, Salone dei Cinquecento of Palazzo Vecchio.

Vittorio Ceccanti began playing the cello aged five, studying with Mischa Maisky and David Geringas and graduating with honours as a pupil of Natalia Gutman from the Hochschule für Musik in Stuttgart.

He made his debut as a soloist aged 17 performing Lalo’s Cello Concerto conducted by Pinchas Steinberg at the Musikvereinssaal in Vienna, and Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, which was televised by RAI TV. Since then, he has been invited to perform regularly as a solo artist in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

He has made many recordings including the Beethoven cello sonatas for EMI Classics, Chopin’s complete works for cello and piano and Sardelli’s Cello Concerto with Modo Antiquo conducted by the composer for Brilliant Classics, Mendelssohn and Fauré’s complete works for cello and piano with the pianist Bruno Canino for Amadeus Magazine, plus Peter Maxwell Davies’ complete works for cello including his Cello Concerto for Naxos.

For more information, visit www.vittorioceccanti.com.

Matteo Fossi began his musical studies at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, and Piero Farulli, Maria Tipo, Pier Narciso Masi, Alexander Lonquich, Trio di Milano, Mstislav Rostropovich and Maurizio Pollini were among his foremost masters. He started a busy concert career while still very young and is now regarded as one of Italy’s most active and versatile chamber musicians.

For many years he has played in a duo with violinist Lorenza Borrani. In 1995 he founded Quartetto Klimt and more recently a piano duo with Marco Gaggini, with whom he is recording the complete works for two pianos by Brahms, Bartók and Schoenberg. With these groups, and as a solo performer, he has participated in most of the main concert seasons in Italy and abroad. He is constantly engaged on projects with artists of international standing.

He has recorded for Decca, Universal, Nimbus, Hortus, Tactus, Amadeus, Stradivarius and the Brilliant Classics labels. He teaches piano at the Conservatorio di Musica Giovan Battista Martini in Bologna and chamber music at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole.

For more information, visit www.matteofossi.com.

Born in Naples, Bruno Canino studied piano and composition at the Conservatory of Milan, where he would then teach for twenty-four years. For ten years he also held piano and chamber music courses at the Conservatory of Bern.

As a soloist and in chamber ensembles he has appeared at the most important venues of Europe, as well as in America, Australia, Japan and China. He forms a piano duo with Antonio Ballista and collaborates with renowned instrumentalists, such as Salvatore Accardo, Uto Ughi, Pierre Amoyal, Itzahk Perlman and Sergei Krylov.

From 1999 to 2002 he directed the Music Section of Venice’s Biennale; his particular dedication to contemporary music has led him to work with, among others, Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, and Sylvano Bussotti, whose works he has often premièred.

Canino has performed under the baton of such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Riccardo Chailly, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Luciano Berio, and Pierre Boulez; and with orchestras such as the Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra di Santa Cecilia, Berliner Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonia, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Orchestre National de France.

He has made numerous recordings: among the more recent ones are the complete piano works by Casella and Chabrier. He regularly holds piano and chamber music masterclasses in Italy, Germany, Spain, and Japan, and has taken part in the Marlboro Music Festival (US) for over forty years.

His books Vademecum del pianista da camera and Senza musica are published by Passigli.

A fellow student of Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr and the pianist and composer John Ogdon in Manchester, the English composer Peter Maxwell Davies went on to study in Italy with Petrassi. This was followed by a short but influential period teaching at a school in England, and he later studied with Roger Sessions and others at Princeton. He made an innovative addition to the theatrical dimension of music, developing the idea behind Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire; and since the early 1970s, when he moved to the remoteness of the Orkneys, he has developed a less experimental musical language, also writing works associated with the community in which he finds himself. He was knighted in 1987 and appointed Master of the Queen’s Music in 2004.

Music Theatre
With the Pierrot Players and later with the ensemble that grew from it, The Fires of London, Maxwell Davies created a series of works in which the dramatic and musical were combined. These, notably, included Eight Songs for a Mad King, Vesalii icones and Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot. His opera Taverner, based on alleged incidents in that composer’s life, was staged in London in 1972. Other stage works include the opera The Doctor of Myddfai, the collaborative comic opera Der heisse Ofen, and the chamber operas The Martyrdom of St Magnus and The Lighthouse.

Orchestral Music
Orchestral music by Maxwell Davies includes symphonies and his 10 Strathclyde Concertos for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, with a wide variety of works ranging from his early Fantasias on an In Nomine of John Taverner to pieces that reflect the Orkneys, including the popular An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise.

Instrumental and Chamber Music
A wide variety of instrumental and chamber music ranges from his impressive early organ piece Fantasia on O magnum mysterium to the recent Naxos Quartets, commissioned by Naxos.

Watch: Recording the Naxos Quartets of Peter Maxwell Davies

On Wings of Song: Peter Maxwell Davies talks to Jeremy Siepmann