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The Italian viola da gamba player, composer, and music teacher, Paolo Pandolfo, began his studies as a double-bass and guitar player, becoming a skilled performer of jazz and popular music. In the mid-late 1970's he studied viola da gamba at the Rome Conservatory. In 1979, he began his research in the field of Renaissance and Baroque musical idioms together with violinist Enrico Gatti and harpsicordist Rinaldo Alessandrini, and co-founded the early music ensemble La Stravaganza, and then moved to Basel, Switzerland in 1981 where he studied with Jordi Savall at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.
In 1982 Paolo Pandolfo became a member of Jordi Savall's early music ensemble Hespèrion XX and played with him until 1990 throughout the world, and making dozens of recordings (among them J.S. Bach's Kunst der Fuge (BWV 1080), J. Dowlands Consort music, Neapolitan Renaissance Music , etc. etc.).
Since 1989 Paolo Pandolfo has served as Professor of viola da gamba at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis - a position previously held by maestros August Wenzinger and Jordi Savall. Since this appointment, he concentrates his teachimg activities in Basel, whilst his performing carrier takes him all over the world, playing with artists such as Emma Kirkby (soprano), Rolf Lislevand (lute), Rinaldo Alessandrini (harpsichord), Mitzi Meyerson (harpsichord), José Miguel Moreno (lute, theorbo, guitar) and many others.He also directs, records, and performs regularly with his viola da gamba-oriented early music ensemble Labyrinto, which he co-founded. Among his pupils: Fahmi Alqhai, Tore Eketorp (Cellini Consort), Emmanuelle Guigues, Claas Harders, Gianni La Marca.
Paolo Pandolfo has recorded for radio and television stations world wide, and numerous CD's for record companies such as Astree, EMI, Philips, Erato, Harmonia Mundi, Tactus, Simphonia. For most of the 1980's he recorded primarily with Jordi Savall and others. His first recording as a soloist was in 1990 with the release of his highly acclaimed CD Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Sonatas for Viola da Gamba (Tactus). Since 1997 all his recordings are by the spanish leading record company Glossa. He started his collaboration with them in 1997 recording the first world integrale of A.Forqueray’s “Pieces de Viole“, followed by “The Spirit of Gambo“ (music by T.Hume with Labyrinto and Emma Kirkby). His first unaccompained recital, "A Solo", was pointed as one of the best releases of the year 1998 by Gramophone. He dedicated two releases to the M.Marais’: “Le Labyrinthe et autres histoires“, dedicated to charachter music by the great french composer and “Le Grand Ballet”, focused on his gestures and dance music. His trancription of J.S. Bach's Six Solo Suites (BWV 1007-1012), released in 2000, has been beyond its great success an important musical event and is a “must” in every complete J.S. Bach discography. He explains that the suites, although written for the cello, were conceived in the polyphonic style of the viola da gamba; further, the dance suite was a common form for viola da gamba music, and playing the J.S. Bach suites on the gamba is thus a way to reclaim this tradition for the viola da gamba. All his recordings have received amazingly positive reviews as well as many awards by the most important musical magazines (Gramophone, Le Monde de La Musique, Goldberg Scherzo, Diapason, etc.). The Carl Friedrich Abel CD “The Drexel Manuscript” was nominated in 2010 for the Best Year’s CD in the category “Instrumental” for the BBC Music Magazine.
Paolo Pandolfo is invited to perform an to give master-classes all over the world. He has been described as the Paganini of the viola da gamba (Basler Zeitung, November 2016).
Paolo Pandolfo builds bridges between the past and the present, bringing spontaneous and immediate life in the perfomance of Baroque and Renaissance music using medias such as improvisation, transcriptions and composition of modern pieces, being conviced that the patrimony of ancient music can be a powerful inspiration for the future of the western musical tradition. |
