Massimo Somenzi, a Venetian native, studied piano with Maria Italia Biagi and is a distinguished student of Rio Nardi and Alfredo Casella. He graduated from the Conservatory “Benedetto Marcello” in Venice with the highest honours. He studied Chamber Music with Sergio Lorenz, Franco Rossi and Antonio Janigro. He has perfected his talent in “Mozarteum” in Salzburg and at the “Musical Association of Paris” where he received the “Premier Prix” of Chamber Music. He has won many national and international competition awards.
Throughout his intensive concert career in chamber music with internationally acclaimed instrumentalists, as well as soloist or with orchestras, he has performed in the most prestigious theatres of Italy (La Scala, Sala Verdi in Milan, Teatro La Pergola in Florence, Grande Teatro of Brescia, Accademia Chigiana of Siena, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Sala Verdi of Turin, Teatro Comunale in Bologna, Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza), France (Auditorium of the Louvre Museum in Paris), Austria (Musikverein in Vienna), Japan (Bunka Kaikan of Tokyo), Spain, Germany, Ex-Yugoslavia, USA, Bulgary, Turkey, Albany, Canada, Portugal, China, and Ex Soviet Union.
His repertoire includes 450 piano compositions performed in public.
As a passionate Mozartian, he has performed most of his chamber music with piano, as well as concerts for the piano and orchestra,the complete collection of Sonatas, Fantasias and Rondo for piano and all compositions for piano duo.
Massimo Somenzi has intensively performed concerts in duet with acclaimed cellist Mario Brunello starting from 1980. Since then the two musicians have played together in over 200 concerts.
“This Duet, that appears to be the revelation of Chamber music of these past years, has imposed itself once more with astonishingly beautiful interpretation.” (Piero Rogger, Il Gazzettino, Venice, 2nd June 1987).
He plays also in a duo with American pianist Gustavo Romero, Clara Haskil Prize winner, with whom he has performed numerous times in the USA and Italy monographic programs as well as complete sets of compositions for piano duo by Mozart, Clementi and Schubert. They recently performed in the USA a program includingBartok Sonata andStranvinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps for piano duo and percussions.
The “Amici della Musica” of Mestre chose to dedicate to Somenzi the “first line” of concert seasons of 2012 and 2013 in hommage of his career: a solo recital with music of Mozart, Liszt, and Malipiero,a recital in duo with Gustavo Romero including a Schubertian program and a recital in duo with Mario Brunello with program of their first concert of 1981 – Beethoven, Brahms, and Prokofiev.
Massimo Somenzi has been part of the jury for important national and international Competitions and regularly attains masterclasses in piano and chamber music in Italy and abroad.
He is a professor of piano at the Conservatory “Benedetto Marcello” in Venice and had been for over a decade director of the “Agostini Steffani” Conservatory in Castelfranco Veneto.
