Umberto Clerici

Cello

Umberto Clerici was born in Turin in 1981 and he began the study of cello when he was five at the Suzuki School of Turin.

Laureate or Prize winner at the most important international cello competitions (the “Antonio Janigro” in Zagreb, the Tchaikovsky in Moscow and the “Rostropovich” Competition in Paris), in 2000 he received his diploma from Turin’s Conservatory with full marks. He attended the courses of Mario Brunello at the “Romano Romanini Foundation” in Brescia, and of David Gиringas in Fiesole. In 2007 he took the master degree (PhD course) at the Augsburg and Nurnberg University (Germany)  with Julius Berger.

In April of 1999 he made his debut as soloist playing Haydn’s D Major cello concerto in Japan. Afterwards he performed with many orchestras including the Philarmonia Wien, “I Pomeriggi Musicali” in Milan, Orchestra of Rome, Brighton Philarmonic, Zagreb Soloist, Orchestra da Camera di Mantova, “Haydn” Orchester of Trento and Bozen, Symphony Orchestras of Istanbul, Ankara, Bursa and the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra collaborating with conductors like Keri-Lynn Wilson, Lu Jia, Dimitri Sitkovetzki, Jean Bernard Pommier, Barry Wordsworth, Ola Rudner and Lukas-Peter Graf.

He had been for 4 years the soloist in residence of Turin Philharmonic.

He recorded a CD of the Saint-Saens cello concerto n°1 for RS label and in 2006 a new cd has been released together with “Amadeus”, the most important italian magazine for classical music, with all the compositions for cello and orchestra by Tchaikovsky and the First concerto by Shostakovich.

He performed in some of the most important concert halls such as the Weill Recital Hall at  Carnegie Hall in New York, the Big Hall of the Musik Verein in Wien and the "Auditorium Parco della Musica" in Rome. In 2003 he made his debut at the Salzburg Festival.

He received many Awards: between them, in July of 2003 he received in Florence a prestigious prize called “Galileo 2000” together with the famous Italian violinist Uto Ughi and the Nobel prize-winner for Peace Simon Peres, the Mozarteum prize in Salzburg, the "Pressenda Award" 2005 for the best young soloist of the year and the Scanno Prize 2007.

He collaborates as principal solo cellist at the "La Scala" Opera House in Milan.

During the year he teaches at the Perosi Academy in Biella and in the summer he serves as the assistant teacher at Julius Berger’s class at the Salzburg Mozarteum. He gave masterclasses at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM), Augsburg Hochschule (Germany), Istanbul Conservatory and Ankara University (Turkey).

Beginning in his early youth, he has partipated in several chamber music groups with a number of famous musicians including Pavel Vernikov, Enrico Pace, Anthony Pay, Sergej Krilov, Massimo Quarta, Marco Rizzi, Mario Brunello, Enrico Dindo, String quartet of La Scala Theatre and composers like Sofia Gubaidulina and Viktor Suslin.

Since April of 2001 he plays with the “Trio di Torino”.

He plays a Giovan Battista Guadagnini cello (Turin 1769) that belonged to the famous Italian cellist Antonio Janigro.