Mario Brunello

• Mario Brunello (Cello)

Mario Brunello is a musician gifted with an uncommon expressive freedom. In 1986 he won the Tchaikovsky Prize in Moscow, the very first Italian to have received this recognition. Over the years he has worked with the greatest conductors such as Abbado, Gergiev, Ozawa, Pappano and Koopman, combining his appearances as a soloist with intense activity as a chamber musician. Eclectic and innovative, in recent years he has promoted the rediscovery of the violoncello piccolo – an instrument no longer in current use, but popular among composers of the 17th and 18th centuries – which bore fruit in the “Brunello Bach Series”, a project consisting of 41 of three recordings in which important masterworks for violin acquired a new dimension on the violoncello piccolo with four strings. After the release of the Sonatas and Partitas (2019) and the Sei Suonate à cembalo certato è violoncello piccolo solo (2021), the trilogy will conclude in 2022 with “Bach Transcriptions”, an ingenious programme of concertos recorded with the Accademia dell’Annunciata. 

In the meantime, the collaboration between Brunello and Arcana gave birth to two remarkable albums with the same instrument: an album dedicated to Tartini (Diapason d’Or) and “Sonar in Ottava” in collaboration with Giuliano Carmignola (which BBC Music Magazine rated as among the “Best Concerto Recordings” of 2020).