Maria Grazia Amoruso is a pianist and organist. Her repertoire ranges from Frescobaldi and Bach to Dallapiccola and Castiglioni. She has distinguished herself in national and international competitions, including the Schubert Competition and the Competition of Geneva. She was invited to the Europa Musica International Festival, the Ticino International Music Festival, the Medina Theater in Madrid, the International Holland Music Sessions and the Bergen Festival. She has collaborated with the Genoa Philharmonic Youth Association, the Alma Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the University of Siena.
Maria Grazia began her artistic career at the Niccolò̀ Paganini Conservatory in Genoa where she graduated in piano with honors with Claudio Proietti. She subsequently specialized with Lazar Berman and Jan Marisse Huizing, at the school of Tatiana Nikolajeva with Oxana Yablonskaja and Alexander Malter and at the school of Heinrich Neuhaus with Lev Naumov and Karl Leister. Her study with Maestro Giorgio Questa was pivotal for her artistic development.
She studied organ and musical interpretation and analysis, and in particular the manuscripts of Italian music of the 16th and 17th centuries with the guidance of the maestro. On the death of Giorgio Questa in 2010, Maria Grazia Amoruso restored the wooden portative organ bequeathed to her by him in order to continue its artistic tradition.
Maria Grazia played Haydn's concerts for organ and orchestra at the Carlo Felice Theater in Genoa and during the Rolli Days she gave four concerts in Genoa for the Giovine Genovese Orchestra. At the link http://www.youtube.com/user/mariagraziaamoruso you can hear organ music played by Maria Grazia, together with a presentation by Flavio Dassenno, professor of Organology at the Brescia Conservatory.
Maria Grazia has recorded for the Deveg, Philarmonia and Zecchini labels. Her recordings include numerous piano CDs with music by Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Fauré, and Debussy and two CDs with the organ by Giorgio Nella.
In 2006 Maria Grazia created the International Music Festival of the Island of Capraia , of which she is the artistic director. The festival, now in its 18th year, is considered an essential element of summer in Capraia. Giorgio Questa’s organ is often included in the festival. It will also be played at a festival in Mombarcaro in Langhe dedicated to the Maestro.
We experience a deep musical reworking, thanks to the continuous overflowing of ideas... shows a marked instrumental solidity and a coherent interpretative personality...
It is in fact instructive to go back to the years of Edwin Fischer's unforgettable interpretations to understand with what equal and authentic humility the Genoese pianist approaches music... and it will not be easy to forget the way of living and breathing the different moods that the pianist has transmitted with extraordinary inner simplicity and expressive strength.
With a very ambitious program that was carried out with a great musicality and technique creating the impressionist atmosphere with a poetic and delicate touch in Debussy... deepening in Beethoven and Brahms and with a passionate and contained Chopin...
The young artist... performed with great success in front of a large and critical audience, arousing... an involvement worthy of an evening of quality music.
There remains the musical lesson, the naturalness with which she relives the enchantments of musical moments, each one penetrated into its physiognomy, capturing in a nutshell that fatalistic sense which will then be revealed in the wider perspectives of the great Sonata in C minor...
With dedication and passion Maria Grazia Amoruso revives on the small wooden organ the Hayden concerts, grasping the characteristics of formal articulation and sensitivity.
I am pleased that Giorgio Questa's voice continues to resonate thanks to the art of Amoruso...
A logical proposal, worthy of being taken into consideration: we recognize a certain discursive naturalness; the romantic elements give privilege to a careful reading of what I would define as classics: phrasing, constant rhythmic scanning, essential pedal, precision in basic colors…
Chopin's two Scherzi are interpreted with great passion in their tumultuous spirit, but also with refinement in their lyrical moment... and with pensive and romantic style the two nocturnes....
[...] With the right spirit and beautiful vivacity, she interprets Schubert, capturing the depth and poetry... She presents the Wanderer Fantasy with the right spirit, in a brilliant way, maintaining a clear and luminous phrasing... in the four Improvisations of op.142... Amoruso renders with poignant pathos the extraordinary, caressing theme of Rosamunda.
[...] In the famous Beethoven Sonata Op.27 Nr.2, after the dreamy Adagio sostenuto, it gives a particular impetus to the restless presto agitato. The Sonata Op.90 emphasizes with particular effectiveness the cantabile... The Brahm’s pieces had great poetic spirit, capable of making us dream in their harmonic development...
Success obtained by the talented Genoese pianist Maria Grazia Amoruso... who performed masterfully...
A completely personal, even intimate version, almost a love affair with Schubert himself ... The result is clean, essential, attractive, sometimes enchanting but full of contrasts.
The reading of the Musical Moments is exciting: fluent discursiveness and musicality. The great Sonata is also extraordinary, a clean, attentive and brilliant interpretation, intimate in the second movement and virtuosic in the finale with a pressing rhythm…