Ramin Bahrami

Piano

Ramin Bahrami  is considered one of the most interesting interpreters today of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music.

In May 2009 he made his debut at the Leipzig Gewandhaus with Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhausorchester, performing two of the greatest Bach Piano Concertos. The Leipziger Volkszeitung wrote: “a wizard of sound, a poet of the keyboard… extraordinary artist who has the courage to face Bach in a true personal way…”.

Other important engagements during the 2009-10 season:

Performances at the “Piano aux Jacobins” Festival in Toulose, then in Finland and Estonia with Andres Mustonen (including the appearance at the Opening Concert of the Tallin Estonian Baroque Festival) and in solo recital; in February his debut in Paris playing the Goldberg Variations and in March a tour with the Festival Strings Lucerne; in May another great success with Riccardo Chailly in Gewandhaus completing the Bach Concerti presentation; Next summer there are invitations from other important European festivals (including La Roque d’Anthéron and Uzés in France) and the Beijing Piano Festival.

The Persian pianist is continuously deepening his original mixture of chiselled interpretative reading, and European but at same time Oriental vision of the monumental piano works by Johann Sebastian Bach.

In 2009 DECCA Universal released the 6-cds box Ramin Bahrami plays Bach, with all Bahrami’s Bach recordings up to then and a selection from live performances over the last years, and in 2010 the French Suites recording. Before that, the Goldberg Variations, the 7 Partitas and the Art of Fugue, released respectively in 2004, 2005 and 2007, launched Bahrami as a popular artist, and the recording of The Art of Fugue reached the top ten of pop-music best sellers in Italy, holding this position for seven weeks; then the release of Concerto Italiano, with Bach works inspired by Italy (Concerto Italiano, Aria variata nella maniera italiana, Capriccio sulla lontananza del fratello dilettissimo, Quattro Duetti, etc.), and in 2009 the  Bach’s Sonatas received again rave reviews from critics and audience alike.

Bahrami has already performed in the most prestigious concert halls of the Italian musical panorama.

Among his highlights, important tours and the performances in halls like Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, Sala Verdi di Milano, Teatro Olimpico di Roma and expecially Accademia di Santa Cecilia, where he appeared in the prestigious “Solo Piano” series in Rome Parco della Musica with Maurizio Pollini, Grigory Sokolov, Daniel Barenboim, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Evgeny Kissin and where, in March 2008, he performed a Bach-Marathon with the cellist Mario Brunello.

In June 2008 he appeared at the Wigmore Hall in London to great critical acclaim

In May 2009, he performed the Art of Fugue at the prestigious “Arturo Benedetto Michelangeli” Brescia and Bergamo International Piano Festival, along side other important pianists such as Andràs Schiff, Lang Lang, Angela Hewitt, Grigory Sokolov, and Alexander Lonquich. In September, he received the invitation to open the autumn edition of Bologna Festival “Il nuovo, l’antico” and to close the Festival Pergolesi Spontini with the cellist Umberto Clerici, playing Bach’s Viola Sonatas.

Born in Teheran, he left his country at the age of 5 with his mother and brothers after the obscure death of his father, a Persian engineer imprisoned during the ayatollah revolution. Bahrami was helped to go in Italy, where he studied piano with Piero Rattalino, graduating at “Giuseppe Verdi” State Conservatory of Milan and at “Incontri col Maestro” Piano Academy of Imola; then he studied with Wolfgang Bloser at the Hochschule für Musik in Stuttgart. Bahrami then specialized with Alexis Weissenberg, András Schiff, Robert Levin, and especially Rosalyn Tureck, the pianist who most remarkably contributed to popularize Johann Sebastian Bach in modern piano repertoire.

Bahrami’s debut at Teatro Bellini in Catania was so impressive, that the Municipality granted him honorary citizenship. In 2004 he signed an exclusive contract with DECCA Universal for a series of Bach recordings, attesting his constantly deepening knowledge of Bach’s work.

In January 2009 Bahrami was awarded the Premio “Città di Piacenza -Giuseppe Verdi” dedicated to the greatest personalities of music (before him: Riccardo Muti, Josè Cura, Leo Nucci and Pier Luigi Pizzi).

“Ramin Bahrami breaks Bach’s music down and rewrites it in a way that reminds to a model, Glenn Gould, but without really being like him. I taught him to accept the bit, but I haven’t tamed him. And I hope he keeps being as he is.” Piero Rattalino