Wanda Landowska Festival & Competition
About us
Associazione Culturale Terra Gialla &
Wanda Landowska International Harpsichord Competition
The Terra Gialla Cultural Association was founded in 2005. For 15 years, it has been active in the field of music through publications, CDs, concerts and cultural events in Italy and abroad, with the specific aim of enhancing and promoting Apulian musical culture through concerts and productions at the most important European jazz and contemporary music festivals and opera houses.
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Between 1993 and 2021, it organised, among others, the Talos Festival. 2012, the Wanda Landowska Festival was launched, and in 2013, the International Competition for Harpsichord Performance and Composition. Not surprisingly, the event bears the name of the famous Polish harpsichordist and teacher Wanda Landowska (1879-1959), the architect of a decisive revival of the harpsichord in the early 20th century.
MARGHERITA PORFIDO, artistic director of the WLIHC
Margherita Porfido graduated in Piano in 1978, in Harpsichord in 1987, and again in 2012 in Harpsichord and Chamber Music in 2014. On top of that, she graduated with honours from the Chigiana Music Academy with the great harpsichordist Kennet Gilbert.
She improved her studies with the masters Michele Marvulli, Rodolfo Caporali, and Vincenzo Vitale for the piano and Annaberta Conti, Rosa Anne Klarer for the harpsichord. She began her concert career at first as a pianist, later devoting herself exclusively to the Harpsichord, exploring both the Ancient Renaissance-Baroque repertoire (in particular Italian music) and the Contemporary one, inviting composers to write for the instrument.
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As a harpsichordist, she has given numerous concerts as a soloist and soloist with orchestra, performing the Concerts of J.S. Bach for 1, 2, 3 and 4 Harpsichords with various Baroque Orchestras. For the Modern-Contemporary repertoire, she performed the concerts for Harpsichord and Orchestra of Virgilio Mortari, Goffredo Petrassi, Gianfrancesco Malipiero, Ivan Vandor and Francis Poulenc, conducted by many of the world's finest conductors, including Bruno Aprea, Vittorio Antonellini, Rino Marrone, Nicoletta Conti.
She has played with Giorgio Gaslini, Maggie Nichols, Gianluigi Trovesi, David Short, Michele Lomuto, Pino Minafra, Livio Minafra, Michel Godard.
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For over 30 years, she has dedicated herself to researching the repertoire that goes by the name of the Neapolitan School. At the same time, she is projected into the future by stimulating Contemporary composers to revive the Harpsichord through NEW MUSIC, exploring the still fresh and current sounds of the instrument.
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Over 40 new compositions by contemporary composers, both Italian and foreign, have been dedicated to her, including Francesco De Santis, Carlo Franci, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Bruno Tommaso, Grazia Salvatori, Gianni Lenoci, Daniele Sepe, Gianluigi Trovesi, Giorgio Gaslini, Pino Minafra as well as Eugenio Colombo, Fred van Hove, Keith Tippett, Michel Godard and Livio Minafra.
She has recorded for Splash Records, Stradivarius, Musica Immagine Records, Audionova, Sorriso, Terra Gialla, Digressione Music, University of Salento.
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She is the founder and artistic director of the International Harpsichord Competition and WANDA LANDOWSKA Festival.
She is emeritus teacher of Piano at the Niccolò Piccinni Conservatory in Bari.