Sandro De Palma

The pianist Sandro De Palma has a long record of performances in his native Italy, in Britain, the U.S., and around the world. His repertory extends from the most common of standard works, such as the Chopin Etudes, to novel rediscoveries and newly composed pieces. Sandro De Palma was born in Cicciano, outside Naples, on February 14, 1957. He showed talent as a small child and studied at a local music school, making his debut at the age of nine or ten. That attracted the attention of the expatriate Russian pianist, Chopin specialist, and teacher Nikita Magaloff, who invited De Palma to study in the Geneva Conservatory program he had inherited from Dinu Lipatti. De Palma took first prize at the Alfredo Casella International Competition in Naples when he was 19, and two years later another first prize at the Bruce Hungerford Foundation competition in New York, an honor that carried with it a Carnegie Hall concert debut. In the 1980s and 1990s, De Palma began to make frequent international appearances. A cycle of the Chopin Etudes at the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli Festival in Italy in 1983 was followed by one of the Preludes at Wigmore Hall in London in 1998. Between those appearances, De Palma had taken time off from his concert career beginning in 1993 to study in London with the late Alice Kezeradze-Pogorelich. In the 2000s, De Palma's major concert appearances have included those with the Orchestra La Fenice, the Rome, Naples, and Milan Radio Orchestras, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. He has toured China as a recitalist, appearing in 2010 at the Shanghai Universal Exhibition, and two years later he performed at the Piano aux Jacobins Festival in Toulouse, France. De Palma has been exceptionally energetic as a chamber music player. He has accompanied string quartets, violinists, cellists, and wind players, and has performed complete cycles of the Beethoven violin sonatas and of all of Brahms' chamber works. De Palma has made several recordings, including, in 2014, an album of piano music by Francesco Cilea, and in 2019 a collection of keyboard sonatas of Muzio Clementi, on the Naxos label. De Palma serves as president of the Muzio Clementi Music Association.
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