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Francesco Parrino, violin

began his musical activities at an early age – when, after listening to him at a private concert, the great guitarist Alirio Diaz recognised him as a “brilliant promise of the Italian art of violin” and encouraged him to pursue a musical career. Since then, Francesco has enjoyed wide consensus from audiences and critics alike for his musicianship, a blend of passionate expressivity and absolute respect for the score that led Mario Messinis, a doyen of Italian music critics, to talk about “the faithful performances of the intense violinist Francesco Parrino” (Il gazzettino, Venice, June 2008).
After obtaining the Diploma in violin at the Milan “Giuseppe Verdi” Conservatoire, the Docerend Musicus degree of the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Utrecht, and the Master of Music at the Royal Academy of Music, London, Francesco completed a PhD on Alfredo Casella and early twentieth-century Italian music at the Royal Holloway College, University of London. He studied violin with Keiko Wataya, Jeroen de Groot and Maurice Hasson, but the pedagogues who exerted the greatest influence on his musical and technical personality were David Takeno and Yfrah Neaman who in 1999 wrote: “I was immediately struck by his intelligence, musical maturity, deep insight into music and high quality of interpretation. He has a thorough knowledge of the principals of violin playing and is able to communicate to his listeners the character and specific style of the music. I find Francesco one of the most interesting and stimulating students I have had, and have great admiration for his qualities”.
Francesco always won scholarships for his studies outside his native Italy from the institutions in which he studied (including the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal Holloway College and the Central Research Fund of the University of London).
Both as a soloist and chamber musician, he performed in important theatres and concert halls in Austria, Chile, Colombia, England, France, Italy, Peru, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Turkey (La Fenice Theatre, Venice; Pollini Auditorium, Padua; Assunta Hall, the Vatican; Dal Verme Theatre and Auditorium, Milan; Savoia Theatre, Campobasso; Shuvalovsky Palace, Composers’ Hall and Small Philharmonic Hall, St. Petersburg; America Hall and Salón Fresno, Santiago, Chile; Fabio Lozano Auditorium, Bogotá; Enescu Hall, Bucharest; Raimondi Theatre, Lima; Leopold Mozart Hall, Salzburg; St. James Piccadilly and St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London; St. John’s College, Cambridge; University of Warwick Music Centre; the Pump Room, Bath; Quirinale, Campidoglio and Casa del Jazz, Rome; etc).
His many awards include First Prize in the Concorso Internazionale “Città di Stresa” (1993) and the Concorso Internazionale “Città di Modica” (1993), the Gold Medal in the Concorso “Carlo Vidusso” (1988), as well as the Joseph Bloch Prize (RAM, 1998) and the Connell Grabowsky Scholarship (RAM, 1997).
Francesco is a founding member and the violinist of the Trio Albatros Ensemble a chamber group that has recorded for Stradivarius, the most important Italian classical label, broadcast on RAI, Channel Five of the Russian TV, Radio della Svizzera Italiana, Vatican Radio and many other radio and television companies, and for whom many works have been written by such distinguished composers as Alessandro Annunziata, Bruno Bettinelli, Luciano Chailly, Gloria Coates, Giorgio Gaslini, Luca Mosca, Flavio Emilio Scogna and Alessandro Solbiati.
As a soloist, he collaborated with the orchestras of Aarad, Kosice, the Turin Philharmonic, the Armonici and Stesichoros chamber orchestras. He premiered works by Marco Betta, Paolo Furlani and Ennio Morricone.
Beside his concert career, Francesco is interested in musicological research. His main areas of research are the history, analysis and criticism of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian music, and the aesthetics and ideologies of musical performance. He contributed papers to seminars and international conferences held by the Universities of Cambridge, London, Oxford and York. He has written articles on “Casella and Stravinsky” and “Italian musicians and anti-fascist Resistance” for the musicological journal of the University of Berkeley, Repercussions, the journal of the University of Siena, Arkete, and the Jewish Museum of Vienna’s Yearbook.
Future engagements include recitals and chamber music concerts in Italy, Britain, South America and Russia as well as a series of recordings of twentieth-century violin concertos under the baton of Maestro Francesco Di Mauro.