Fiammetta Tarli Bio

Fiammetta Tarli plays regularly all over Europe, both as a soloist and in different chamber music groups, including Ofer Falk (former first violin of the Allegri Quartet), Rohan De Saram (former cellist of the Arditti Quartet), David Cohen, Roger Chase, conductors Muhai Tang, Stanislav Oushev, Robert Bokor, Massimiliano Caldi, and Martin Georgiev, as well as her husband Ivo Varbanov (two pianos – four hands). Composers Silvina Milstein and Martin Georgiev have composed for Fiammetta as a soloist as well as with Ivo as a piano duo.

Between 2016 and 2023 Fiammetta has performed in the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Luxenbourg, Poland, Macedonia, and Slovakia. She also made her debut as soloist in China with the Tianjin Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Muhai Tang.

Highlights of her engagements include performances at Cadogan Hall and St John Smith Square (London), West Road Concert Hall (Cambridge), Royal Concert Hall, New Auditorium (Glasgow), Honeywell Music Room (Oxford), St Georges (Bristol), Tianjin Concert Hall (China), Palast Hohenems, Austria (Kammerorchester Arpeggione), Philharmonic Hall Gdansk, Poland (Gdansk Philarmonic Orchestra), Sala Bulgaria, Sofia (Sofia Soloists in the Sofia Philarmonic Season: première of Diptych of Light and Time, Concerto for two pianos and string orchestra composed for Fiammetta and Ivo by Martin Georgiev), Varna Opera House (Varna Philarmonic Orchestra), Shumen Symphony Hall (Shumen Philarmonic Orchestra), and at festivals such as ‘Brahms Unwrapped’ at the Kings Place (London), Wye Valley Music Festival (United Kingdom), ‘Conciertos Temáticos’ in Santander (Spain), the Sofia Music Weeks (Bulgaria), the International Chamber Music Festival ‘Konvergencie’ in Bratislava, Piano Extravaganza (Sofia), Les concerts du foyer Européen (Luxembourg), Ohrid Summer Festival (Macedonia), Apollonia Festival of Arts (Bulgaria), etc.

Fiammetta started studying piano at the age of five with Giampiero Semeraro in Pisa, her hometown, and gave her first concert at nine. She earned her diploma in Piano Performance and Music Studies at the Florence Conservatoire at the age of seventeen. She specialised in solo repertoire with Maria Tipo, Lydia Rocchetti Pezzati and Ilonka Deckers in Italy, and in chamber music with Iain Ledingham at Royal Academy of Music, London. She participated several times in masterclasses with Alexander Lonquich and Elio Battaglia. Her keen interests in literature and musicology prompted her to achieve her Master of Musicology  and PhD at King’s College London. She has been leading masterclasses herself in London and at the Radom National Music School in Poland.

Together with Ivo Varbanov, Fiammetta founded a new audiophile record label: Independent Creative Sound and Music (ICSM) Records.

Her concerts have been broadcast by RAI and Rete Toscana Classica (Italy), Slovak, Bulgarian and Spanish National Radios. Fiammetta’s recordings – two of them with Gega New, Bulgaria, five with ICSM Records and one with Lorelt Records (first recording of In a bowl of grey blue leaves for two pianos, composed by Silvina Milstein and dedicated to the duo Tarli-Varbanov) – have received wide acclaim by the international press (International Record Review, Rivista Musica, Fanfare, Observer, Klassisk Musikkmagasin, HI-FI+). Her next publications include: Mozart’s two-piano concertos (K 365 and K 242) recorded with the English Chamber Orchestra, Brahms’s two-piano compositions recorded with Ivo on Steingraeber pianos in Bayreuth and then in London, Menuhin Concert Hall, and the recordings of Mozart Piano Concertos K 466 and 467 (January 2022, with cadenzas newly composed for her by Martin Georgiev) with the Tippett String Quartet in London.

Fiammetta’s most recent project is going to be the world premiere of Martin Georgiev’s Piano Concerto, composed for her in 2022, and its subsequent recording.

August 2023

---

I would place Tarli’s readings [of Schoenberg’s Six Piano Pieces Op. 19] on equal footing with those I’ve heard by Roland Pöntinen on BIS e Maurizio Pollini on Deutsche Grammophon, and she is better recorded on this ICSM release than either of them.

—Jerry Dubins, Fanfare, USA

The pianist Fiammetta Tarli performs [Beethoven’s] sparkling runs with the ease and accuracy of a superior virtuoso, and delivers the lyrical parts and dense cadenzas with subtlety and emotion.

—Press Review, Austria

Tarli plays the Moments musicaux with an unaffected directness that allows them to speak with charm and grace. The Fantasiestücke is fully mature Schumann, marked by all the arabesque-like keyboard figuration, spontaneous-sounding melodic sweep, Romantic impulse, and technically demanding virtuosity, all of which Tarli demonstrates her mastery of and real feeling for.

—Jerry Dubins, Fanfare, USA

Tarli plays Romantic music as though it is Classical music – simple and elegant without excessive colour or decoration.  Her abstract sound resonates with this Schoenberg piece.

—Michifuyu Kitao, The Record Geijutsu, Japan

I was especially impressed with the sense of buoyant fun that Fiammetta Tarli found in Schoenberg’s op. 19 Klavierstücke.

—Martin Anderson, Klassisk Musikkmagasin, Norway

When it comes to Schumann, Tarli is clearly at home. You won’t hear the ‘Fantasiestücke’ more intensely played, with alternately a fluid, never-to-light touch and a passionate, crunchy aggression. To follow Tarli‘s own theme, her strength is the freedom to her playing. 

But the Schoenberg is reason enough to own this CD. Here Tarli is brilliant, and articulate, allowing the background Romanticism of these pieces to come to the fore. 

—Hi-Fi+, UK

Fiammetta Tarli, piano: an impressive tone quality, an emotional performance with intensive music-making and a soft, supple transfer from a beautiful lyrical mood to an energetic virtuosity.

—Ekaterina Docheva, Kultura, Bulgaria

Tarli performs with both style and flair. Some of the highlights of her disc are magical, such as her fiery, yet at times light-hearted reading of Schumann’s “Aufschwung,” her impassioned way with “In der Nacht,” or the ultimate stillness she creates in the last of Schoenberg’s six pieces.

—Scott Noriega, Fanfare, USA