MARIA TIPO (b 1931)
ITALIAN PIANIST

Maria Tipo first studied piano with ther mother who had been a student of Busoni.  She subsequently studied with Alfredo Casella and Guido Agosti (whose other pupils included Leslie Howard and Raymond Lewenthal among many significant pianists of the 20th century).  She won the Geneva international piano competition at 17 and has been performing to great acclaim since including being referred to as the "Neapolitan Horowitz". No less a titan of the piano, Martha Argerich, called her "sensational", and Argerich was not alone in her praise.

Sadly, Maria Tipo has had a much greater following among pianists than among the public at large.  But no small wonder, her genius is such that the average music lover who does not have a first hand understanding of the complexity of what she achieves at the piano does not realize the magnitude of her genius.

One of the great contrpuntalists, Maria Tipo's Bach is second to none. Her Scarlatti is scintillating, at her hands, Clementi is raised to the rank of a great composer, and her Mozart and Beethoven, only available to us here in concerto recordings, are exquisite.

Of the Scarlatti recordings here, K 491 and K 118 are the ones I return to again and again as they best demonstrate the orchestral pallet of this most marvelous of pianists.

Maria Tipo's Chopin is a love affair.  Every note is caressed, the tempi languid, the rubati delicate.  It is understatedly elegant grandeur, it is the eloquence of perfection.  At her fingers, these nocturnes are very nearly operatic arias. There are six nocturnes in the collection below.  Feast on them.  And wonder why, as I do, that her name is not among those that come up when the great interpreters of Chopin are discussed.

I recently wrote that Carlo Zecchi is arguably the greatest of all pianists.  I ought to have said, of all male pianists," for Maria Tipo surely shares that distinction on the distaff side.

Scarlatti  Sonatas

recorded in 1955

Presto in G major, K 14 (L 387)