Giusy De Berardinis

Giusy De Berardinis, pianist, harpsichordist and researcher, is especially interested in the music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and in the history and evolution of keyboard technique up to and following the advent of the piano.

Deeply influenced by Emilia Fadini, her teacher and personal friend, she has mainly based her professional life on historical research and performing. In 2007 she was invited to the fourteenth annual congress of the Italian Society of Musicology to speak about her research work on the origin of the Italian sonata and its relationship with the development of piano technique. She has rediscovered the composer Ferdinando Turrini and recorded three world premiere recordings of his Sonatas: Le Sonate per il Cembalo Pianoforte (Ermitage – Fabula Classica) on a Broadwood square piano, London, 1806) and Sei Sonate per Cembalo opera Mangili 1795 e Sei Sonate per Cembalo coll’accompagnamento d’un violino, ed una Fuga infine a Cembalo solo, 1784 (Tactus, double CD, on a Johan Fritz square piano, Wien 1810 circa). Concerning Turrini’s Sei sonate per Cembalo – Raccolta Fini (1795) she edited a critical edition for the Libreria Italiana Musicale (LIM 2009). Furthermore, she devoted an essay to Turrini’s life and works: Nuove acquisizioni sulla vita e le opera di Ferdinando Turrini (Studi musicali – Accademia nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Roma 2012). She also investigated the composer Gaetano Valeri, Turrini’s pupil and one of the most active and respected composers of the Veneto region during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, bringing to light new data about him, regarding both his date of birth (found to be March 5, 1762) and his production of five unpublished concertos for harpsichord/fortepiano and orchestra. She devoted an essay to his life and works: Gaetano Valeri, «esimio armonista» a Padova (Ad Parnassum Journal, Ut Orpheus, Bologna 2019). She has held courses in harpsichord and piano interpretation and performance at private music schools as well at several Conservatories: ‘A. Casella’ (L’Aquila), ‘Luca Marenzio’ (Brescia), ‘Girolamo Frescobaldi’ (Ferrara), ‘Umberto Giordano’ (Foggia), ‘Luisa D’Annunzio’ (Pescara) and the ‘Royal Academy of Music’, (Aahrus, Denmark). In 2020, she had the honour of conducting the last video interview of Emilia Fadini on the occasion of her visit to the Conservatory ‘L. D’annunzio’ of Pescara and, with the harpsichordist Massimo Salcito, has published the photobook Emilia Fadini, a documentary tribute to this special moment (Youcanprint, 2021). Passionate about historical keyboard instruments, she owns an original square piano made by J. Fritz (Wien, 1810), a three-quarter grand piano Pleyel (Paris 1863) and a double manual harpsichord made by Michael Johnson, a historical copy of a 1685 Ruckers instrument.