Dino Ciani

The Dino Ciani Piano Competition was created in his memory. Inaugurated in 1975, it is held at Teatro alla Scala. Distinguished members of the jury have included Nikita Magaloff, Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini, Lazar Berman, Rudolf Firkusny and Aldo Ciccolini. From 2007 there has been a Dino Ciani Festival and Academy at Cortina d'Ampezzo.

His repertoire was broad and diverse for a pianist of his age. It encompassed the complete sonatas of Beethoven, works by Weber (he was the first to record the complete sonatas, in 1967), Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy and Bartók. His recordings for Deutsche Grammophon of the complete Debussy Préludes (1972), Schumann's Novellettes (1968) and Weber's second and third piano sonatas (1970) are particularly renowned and belong to the pianistic heritage.

Ciani's career began when he won second prize at the Liszt-Bartók Competition in Budapest in 1961. The venues in which he performed included Salle Pleyel, Carnegie Hall and Chicago Philharmonic, Kennedy Center. He made his debut at Teatro alla Scala under the baton of Claudio Abbado with Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto in 1968. With Abbado he also performed Prokofiev's Fifth Piano Concerto in 1968 at RAI Auditorium in Rome (then also at La Scala) and Mozart's D minor Concerto at the Salzburger Mozarteum. Ciani also played with the young Riccardo Muti Beethoven's Choral Fantasy at La Scala and the Second Piano Concerto by Bartók at Milan RAI.

Ciani was born in Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) and studied piano with Martha Del Vecchio in Genoa. He obtained his diploma at the Conservatory in Rome at the age of 14 and later, from 1958 to 1962, attended the advanced courses of Alfred Cortot, whom he greatly revered, in Paris, Lausanne and Siena. Cortot described Ciani in most enthusiastic terms: "miraculously gifted ... one of the most remarkable examples of the rarest talents one could hope to find".

Dino Ciani (June 16, 1941 – March 28, 1974) was an Italian pianist.