TADDEI, ANNAROSA (b 1918 )

Born in 1918, Annarosa Taddei began to study the piano at an early age. In Rome she was a pupil of Alfredo Casella (she is the last surviving member of his school) and enjoyed an outstanding artistic career in Italy and Switzerland, including Geneva where she appeared at the most prestigious concerts. On 15th March 1946 in Rome, she gave the first Italian performance of John Ireland’s Piano Concerto, with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma della RAI conducted by Casella, in a concert broadcast live by Italian Radio. She also gave the first performance of the work in Switzerland. After the war she met Alfred Cortot who, after Casella’s death, taught her from 1947 to 1949. Annarosa Taddei was one of Cortot’s favourite students and he introduced her to conductors such as Carl Schuricht, Jonel Perlea and Ernest Ansermet. Her deep friendship with Cortot led to his being considered one of the family, so that on the occasion of her wedding he was one of the official witnesses. Annarosa Taddei began her recording career in 1950, setting down works by Sandro Fuga, Alfredo Casella and Domenico Casella for CETRA in Rome. Immediately afterwards she recorded for Vox (the Mendelssohn two-piano concerto with Orazio Frugoni, and Casella’s Scarlattiana conducted by Julius Patzak) at the Vienna Staastoper. In 1976, owing to problems with her wrists, she stopped performing in public, devoted herself to teaching in Perugia and Rome and became a jury member of several important piano competitions. Today Annarosa Taddei is still active as a teacher, and as recently as January 2007 was a jury member of a piano competition in Hong Kong. She opens this historic anthology with a scintillating performance of the effervescent Studio N.1 of Sandro Fuga (1906-1994).

WOMEN AT THE PIANO - AN ANTHOLOGY OF HISTORIC PERFORMANCES, Vol. 3 (1928-1954)	8.111217