Ugo Cividino
Vice President Italy
Born in Udine in 1947, at the age of 17 he graduated with honors in piano from the Istituto Musicale Pareggiato “J. Tomadini” in Udine. In 1965, he moved to Vienna to study at the Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, which later became the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst. During his ten-year stay in the Austrian capital, he took piano lessons with Professor Walter Panhofer, renowned member of the Vienna Octet, chamber music courses, courses in electronic music and sound technology, and several semesters of conducting with Hans Swarowsky.
Since 1967, he has been active as a soloist in Austria, Germany and Italy, gradually shifting to chamber music. The most intense period of this new artistic phase began in 1972; his predilection for the trio, the quartet and in particular the string quintet led him to collaborate with musicians from various countries, including: Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden, Poland, Iran, Japan.
Since 1980, he has been working as a duo (notably with two pianos) with his wife Franca Bertoli. As part of this formation, he has been a guest at numerous international festivals and concert and cultural organizations in Europe, including: La Roque d’Anthéron Piano Festival, Wimbledon, Lyon, Zagreb Academy of Music, Oslo Academy of Music, Salamanca Conservatory, Graz, Salzburg and Vienna Hochschulen, ORF (Austrian Radio) with a live two-piano concert on the radio, Croatian Radio and Television (with two fully rebroadcast concerts a few hours apart and a televised concert). As a piano duo, he released a CD of music by Martinu, Brahms and J.Françaix in Hannover.
He is a regular guest on instrumental and chamber music courses in Austria, France, Spain, Croatia, Portugal and Italy. Recently, with Franca Bertoli, he organized a piano master-class and several concerts, in piano duo and string quintet with piano, as a guest of the University of Houston in Texas.
Apart from the Udine Conservatory, where he has taught since 1969, he founded in 1976 and still presides over the Udine Center for Music Research and Diffusion (CRDM), a non-profit association which, according to its statutes, was created and operates to provide artistic support for young musicians by offering exchange opportunities and seminar activities with teachers of European renown.
Since 1987, he has been responsible for disseminating and safeguarding the contents of the Willems® music education methodology in Italy for the Willems® International Federation, of which he is vice-president.
He gives courses in psycho-pedagogy and instrumental teaching propaedeutics at foreign universities and various Italian conservatories. As a teacher, he regularly gives courses in propaedeutics and advanced piano teaching at the Conservatory of Eisenstadt (Austria) and at the Glasbena Sola in Ljubljana (SLO).
In 2004, he was awarded the Silver Medal of the President of the Italian Republic C.A.Ciampi for his project for the education of nursery and elementary school children in basic musical language.
He has numerous artistic and educational contacts with European musical institutions, including: Madrid Academy, Oslo Academy, Hannover Hochschule, Aachen, Karlsruhe, Salzburg, Graz, Vienna, Salamanca Conservatory, Versailles, Paris and Lyon, Prague, Ljubljana, Zagreb, London College of Music. He takes part in international conferences on music education at several universities (Bicocca – Milan).
Since 1988, he has been a direct member of London’s ISME (International Society of Music Education), and helped found the EPTA (European Piano Teachers Association) chapters in Austria and Norway with his own artistic contributions (in Oslo, he presented M. Clementi’s Gradus ad Parnassum, performing 34 pieces in full and in part). Thanks to his linguistic skills, he has translated numerous treatises and musical essays from French and German. He is responsible for editions in Italy on behalf of the Swiss publishing house Pro Musica. Since 1989, he and his wife Franca have been teaching and training teachers for the Willems® Pedagogical Diploma and Willems® Certificate on behalf of the Willems® International Federation in Italy, Austria and Slovenia.
He is the author of several chamber music pieces and has published several theoretical works on musical research.
Since 1982, he has been an active member of Lions Club International.
As part of the Conservatory’s renovation, he was appointed senior piano teacher and head of the extraordinary “Piano Duo” class (2 pf. and pf. 4 hands) and the extraordinary chair of “Audio Recording, Reproduction and Post-production Techniques”.
Skills
- Foreign languages – French and German
- Specialized piano repertoire: Viennese neoclassicism, pre-Romanticism and Romanticism.
- Chamber music with piano
- Piano duets (2 pianos and 4 hands)
- Psycho-pedagogy and psycho-acoustics in music education
- Instrumental didactics
- Trainer of didactic frameworks for early music education and instrumental propaedeutics
- Music publishing
- Graphic design in music publishing
- Translations from French and German
- Sound technology