Nazzareno Carusi

Nazzareno Carusi (born November 9, 1968, in Celano, Abruzzo) is an Italian pianist.

A pupil of Alexis Weissenberg and Victor Merzhanov, he also studied with Lucia Passaglia and Adriano Vendramelli.

The classical studies with Ugo Maria Palanza and Vittoriano Esposito and the meetings with the Dominican theologian F. Innocenzo Colosio, pupil of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, and Isaac Stern were decisive for his formation.

He is considered among the piano virtuosos in which, however, strong elements of musical research go beyond the mere domain of the keyboard and his pianism has been described either as a synthesis between the Russian school of Gilels and Richter and the German tradition of Claudio Arrau, or as the personal expression of a sovereign musical freedom.

Riccardo Muti called him "a superlative pianist and a musician of the highest value".

In his early twenties, he won the national competition for chairs in the Italian Music Conservatories (1990) and became their youngest professor of "Chamber music".

He won also the Réncontres Internationales de Piano in Paris (1999) and the Alexis Weissenberg Prize, awarded by the legendary pianist Alexis Weissenberg himself (1995).

He collaborated with Eleonora Buratto, the Philharmonische Camerata Berlin and Mischa Maisky, the Fine Arts Quartet.

His live recordings from Teatro alla Scala, from Teatro Colon and from the Jewel Box Series at Northeastern Illinois University of Chicago were released by EMI.

At the turn of the 10s, he was the first classical pianist to sign an exclusive with a main commercial television: Mediaset [10].

He participated with very high ratings in popular programs [11] and the critics recognized him that, despite the "lightness" of these occasions, he gave up nothing of the rigor of the classical artist [12].

He conducted a popular column for Mattino Cinque, some excerpts of which were collected in the album "Petrolio", and he also played with Italian pop and jazz stars like Lucio Dalla, Simona Molinari and Sergio Cammariere.

He conceived the melologues "Notturno a Shakespeare" with Pietrangelo Buttafuoco [14] and "Discorso a due" with Vittorio Sgarbi.

Finally, he collaborated weekly with the magazine Panorama, the all-news tv channel Tgcom24 and the newspaper Libero.

For this commitments he was awarded the Special Mention of the "Giustiniano Prize" in Ravenna in 2013 [16].

In 2018, the consequences of three vertebral fractures forced him to retire from concert activity and it was the former Secretary of the Italian Council of Ministers Gianni Letta who understood his institutional capacities too and since then started him on the management and artistic direction career.

On February 10, 2021, it was his initiative that led the world of performing arts, for the first time in the history of the Italian Republic, to consultations for the formation of the new government by the appointed Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

Today, he is a notable cultural manager, holding the positions of Board Member of the Teatro alla Scala, President of the "Alfredo Casella" Conservatory of L'Aquila, Vice President of the Foundation "Orchestra Regionale Toscana" of Florence.

Since May 2022 he is the artistic director Paganini Competition, considered one of the top famous violin competitions in the world, which under his direction has recorded the highest ever subscribers' number since its foundation.

Married to Barbara Valli, he has four children: Francesco Carusi, Émilie Carusi, Elisabetta Carusi and Riccardo Scala.