Vittorio Ghielmi soprano and bass viola da gamba, art. director
Vittorio Ghielmi is a viola da gamba player, conductor, composer, and Head of the Department of Early Music at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg. Compared by critics to Jascha Heifetz (Diapason) for his virtuosity, he has gained recognition for his innovative approach to the viol and to the sound of the Baroque and Classical repertoire. His research and artistic work on the nature of sound have made him a sought-after guest conductor for both modern and period orchestras.
As one of the leading figures of the early music scene, Ghielmi has shared the stage from a very young age with renowned artists such as Gustav Leonhardt (duo), Cecilia Bartoli, and András Schiff. He appears regularly as a soloist or conductor with major orchestras (including Staatskapelle Berlin, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Wiener Philharmoniker, the Wiener Concert-Verein, etc.) as well as with renowned Baroque ensembles (Il Giardino Armonico, Freiburger Barockorchester, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, among others). He served as assistant to Riccardo Muti at the Salzburger Festspiele. Since his youth he has performed regularly in duo with the lutenist Luca Pianca or with his brother, Lorenzo Ghielmi.
Ghielmi’s ensemble Il Suonar Parlante, founded in 2007 with the Argentinian singer Graciela Gibelli, is dedicated to explorations of the early music repertoire and to the creation of new projects, including collaborations with prominent jazz and classical musicians. He worked with the Hollywood director Marc Reshovsky on a staged production of Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri (2007). Artist-in-residence at many European festivals, in 2018 he conducted Rameau’s Pygmalion at the Drottningholms Slottsteater (Stockholm) in collaboration with the choreographer and dancer Saburo Teshigawara (KARAS). This was followed by Handel’s Apollo and Daphne for the Händel-Festspiele in Halle in 2019; Scarlatti’s Griselda at the Gliwice Ruins of the Victoria Theatre with Tomasz Cyz (2025); and Scarlatti’s La Giuditta at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena with Florentine Klepper (2025).
In 2023, Vittorio Ghielmi opened the largest exhibition ever realised about digital arts in Germany (“Dimensions”, Leipzig) with a solo recital. He has published studies and editions of early music (Minkoff, Fuzeau, Libroforte, etc.) as well as a widely known method for the viola da gamba (Ut Orpheus). The new book Decoding Marin Marais (together with Christoph Urbanetz) was published in 2025 (Libroforte). The artist has given masterclasses at many universities and conservatories (Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, the Juilliard School in New York, Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles, and the Royal College of Music in London). His fieldwork in surviving traditional musical practices led to him receiving the Erwin Bodky Award (1997), and the ECHO Klassik award 2015, among others. Ghielmi’s collaboration with classical musicians is documented in the film The Heart of Sound – A Musical Journey with Vittorio Ghielmi. Recent CDs include “Gypsy Baroque” (2018) and “Le secret de Monsieur Marais” (2020) for Alpha Classics.
