Born and raised in Foggia, Italy, Antonio Pompa-Baldi won the Cleveland
International Piano Competition in 1999 and embarked on a career that continues to extend across five continents. A top prize winner at the 1998 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition of Paris, Pompa-Baldi also won a silver medal at the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
Pompa-Baldi appears at the world’s major concert venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Milan’s Sala Verdi, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Shanghai’s Grand Theatre, and Paris’ Salle Pleyel, to name a few.
He has collaborated with leading conductors including Hans Graf, James Conlon, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Theodore Kuchar, Benjamin Zander, Louis Lane, and Keith Lockhart. He has performed with ensembles and colleagues such as the Takács String Quartet, trumpeter Alison Balsom, cellist Sharon Robinson, Juilliard Quartet violinist Areta Zhulla, and principals of The Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, and New York Philharmonic, among others.
With a concerto repertoire including more than 60 works, Pompa-Baldi has
performed cycles of all the Rachmaninoff piano concertos, the five Beethoven
piano concertos, and both Brahms piano concertos, among many other mainstream works.
He also loves performing new scores, and lesser-known ones, from premiering piano concertos by Italian composers Roberto Piana and Luca Moscardi, to resurrecting the early A minor Respighi Piano Concerto, the Howard Ferguson Concerto and the Cecile Chaminade Konzertstück, to name a few. Pompa-Baldi has played recitals in most major venues over the world, attaining the same balance between featuring beloved works from the standard repertoire, and showcasing new or unjustly neglected masterpieces. Among recent stops on his tours, he performed in Vienna, Austria; Malaga, Spain; Nancy, France; New York; Cape Town, South Africa; Husum Festival, Germany; Duszniki Chopin Festival, Poland. Just before the pandemic, he toured China, playing in Beijing, Wuhan, Nanjing, Dalian, Guangzhou, as well as the Lang Lang festivals in Shenzhen and Hangzhou.
Mr. Pompa-Baldi has recorded over 30 CDs to date, for various labels including
Centaur Records, Steinway, Brilliant Classics, Harmonia Mundi, TwoPianists, and Azica. Among them, the complete piano and chamber music works of Grieg, theJosef Rheinberger Piano Sonatas, the complete Hummel Piano Sonatas, and CDs dedicated to Brahms, Schumann, Liszt, Respighi, and Rachmaninoff.
For the Steinway label, Pompa-Baldi recorded a disc of songs by Francis Poulenc and Edith Piaf, arranged for solo piano, to commemorate the 50th year of the passing of both French musical icons, as well as a CD titled “Napoli”, which features new piano versions of famous Neapolitan songs.
His latest releases feature Concertos for Violin, Piano, and Orchestra by
Mendelssohn, Haydn, and Hummel, as well as a CD of newly composed Opera
Fantasies on La Bohème and Carmen, by Roberto Piana.
The Steinway label also recently released Pompa-Baldi’s piano transcription of the Respighi B minor Violin Sonata, The score has been published by the Japanese publishing house Muse Press.
Antonio Pompa-Baldi is a Steinway Artist since 2003.
Pompa-Baldi is on the faculty at CIM as Artist-in-Residence and Distinguished
Professor of Piano.
He is often invited to judge international piano competitions such as the Cleveland, Hilton Head, E-Competition (Minneapolis), BNDES Rio de Janeiro, and Edward Grieg (Bergen), among many others. He serves as president of the jury and artistic advisor for the San Jose International Piano Competition since 2006.
From 2009 to 2012, Pompa-Baldi lead the Manuel Rueda program in Santo
Domingo, working with Fundación por la Musica, mentoring young
Dominican pianists.
In 2015, Pompa-Baldi founded the Todi International Music Masters festival, of
which he is artistic director and faculty member. This summer festival takes
place every August in the beautiful Italian town of Todi. It features 15 concerts in 15 days, masterclasses with internationally renowned faculty members, and
students from all over the world.
His students have been prizewinners in important competitions such as Marguerite Long, Hilton Head, Isang Yun, and Gina Bachauer. He is regularly invited to teach masterclasses in countless universities, music schools, and festivals in the US and all over the world. He holds honorary professorships from the Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang Conservatories, as well as several other institutions.