: PRESS QUOTES
"A firework of pianistic brilliance and technical versatility." Luxemburger Wort
"David Ianni laisse un souvenir impérissable au public avec ses sept valses, remarquables tant sur le plan de l’écriture que de l’interprétation." Classic Agenda
"David Ianni holte seine Zuhörer ab aus der Rastlosigkeit des Alltags, um sie auf eine Reise in eine Welt einzuladen, in der es allein der Kraft der Klänge obliegt, Traumwelten zu erschließen, Bilder in die Luft zu zeichnen und die großen und kleinen Geschichten des Lebens zu erzählen." Potsdamer Neue Presse
: BIOGRAPHY
Deep down, David Ianni is a romantic – and will always be one, which is good. Because it’s this attitude that impacts the compositions of the classical pianist from Luxembourg, whose aim it is to touch and enrich people with his seemingly light-hearted piano pieces, which nevertheless are, stylistically speaking, exceedingly hard to grasp. These days, the composer has set off to explore new artistic territory which goes far beyond the realm of music. With his project “My Urban Piano”, which was already launched this spring and will continue far into the next year, the artist presents a clear musical vision that underlines his commitment to the Idea of Europe in a very playful way: David Ianni is taking his compositions onto a journey of adventures that will lead him to twelve European Capitals of Culture. David will dedicate one piece, respectively, to every leg of his journey and every city, and he will interpret every single composition using a different piano, individually designed by local artists. Every performance will furthermore be recorded as a video in accordance with the respective musical composition and the local surroundings, whereby the filmmakers have no restrictions whatsoever regarding their concepts of visualisation and narration.
David Ianni’s musical career started at a very early age and could easily have gone in a very different direction. By now, the thirty-seven-year-old artist from Luxembourg could just as well have been an internationally renowned concert pianist, famous not only in Europe but worldwide, who would have left his very own imprint on the canonical repertoire of piano concerts. Born to an Italian father and a mother from Luxembourg, at the age of nine young David already frequented the Conservatoire of Esch-sur-Alzette. He graduated there as a pianist at the age of fifteen – and, looking back now, he states that at the time he had already acquired eighty per cent of his technical skills.
In order to continue his studies, David Ianni then moved to London, where he attended the Purcell School and had extra tuition offered by a professor of the Royal Academy of Music. Following this, he signed in at Conservatorium Maastricht, where he graduated in 2005. During all of these years of studies, he took lessons with renowned pianists such as Dimitri Bashkirov, Radu Lupu and Anatol Ugorski. David Ianni played his first major concert at the age of sixteen: Piano Concerto No. 2 by Liszt, which he performed together with the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. The young artist was honoured with national and international awards and undertook concert tours through various countries in Europe but also travelled as far as Japan, India and Vietnam.
And then there was a moment in the late 1990s when David Ianni no longer wanted to merely interpret the canonical repertoire; instead, he began to see himself more as a composer, as someone who wants to bring to life his own ideas and visions. It goes without saying that this quandary led to a serious crisis. In those times of doubt, David turned to sacred music, which he then studied intensely. He was offered the possibility to go into retreat at the Cistercian Convent Stift Heiligenkreuz in Austria’s Wienerwald region, where he was able to withdraw and focus on himself. “Strength lies in calmness” – this idiom then became his artistic credo, as can be seen by his two albums “Night Prayers – Mystical Piano Dreams” (2011) and “Prayers of Silence” (2014). The two solo piano albums consisting of David Ianni’s own compositions are musical meditations in which he traces the phenomenon of silence. His work with the monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz furthermore resulted in two remarkable albums in which he accompanied their Gregorian chorales with own piano compositions: “Chant – Amor et Passio” (2011), which was awarded platinum in Austria, and its successor, “Chant – Stabat Mater” (2012).
David Ianni’s earliest own compositions date back to when he was a teenager. Meanwhile, the prolific artist has created an œuvre consisting of approximately 120 works, including three sonatas, chamber music, works for orchestra, an oratorio and even an opera for children, and all of his works are painstakingly indexed with their own opus number. As a child, David had been daydreaming about composing music together with famous classical composers – the people he had in mind were the likes of Mozart and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Now, he himself is on the verge of being one of the nation’s famous modern composers. When it comes to cultural richness and complexity, “My Urban Piano” is doubtlessly his most ambitious project so far. His “Train of Dreams” is certainly picking up pace...
