Born and raised in Foggia, Italy, Antonio Pompa-Baldi won the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 1999 and embarked on a career that continues to extend across five continents. A top prize winner at the 1998 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition of Paris, France, Antonio Pompa-Baldi also won a silver medal at the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
Mr. Pompa-Baldi appears regularly at the world’s major concert venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Paris’ Salle Pleyel, Milan’s Sala Verdi, Shanghai’s Grand Theatre, and Boston’s Symphony Hall. He performed in London, Tokyo, Seoul, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Kiev, Auckland, Hong Kong, and Beijing, where he played a recital in the Forbidden City Concert Hall and conducted Master Classes at the China National Conservatory, being named Honorary Guest Professor of that institution. Pompa-Baldi has played with the Houston Symphony, Berliner Symphoniker, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Boston Pops, and Colorado Symphony, among many others. He has collaborated with great musicians and conductors such as Hans Graf, James Conlon, Louis Lane, Keith Lockhart, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya.
His extensive recording catalogue features 20 CDs and is constantly growing. Among his recordings, the entire piano repertoire of Grieg for Centaur Records in twelve CDs, a live recital of his award-winning Cliburn Competition performances on Harmonia Mundi, and “The Rascal and the Sparrow-Poulenc meets Piaf”, piano arrangements of songs by Francis Poulenc and Edith Piaf on the Steinway Label. His latest CD, “After a reading of Liszt”, is a tribute to Liszt recorded live in recital at the Stellenbosch Conservatory, and released by the South African label TwoPianists. For Centaur Records, he has also recorded an all-Schumann disc, an all-Rachmaninoff CD, as well as the Rheinberger Piano Sonatas. Pompa-Baldi is now recording the complete Hummel Piano Sonatas. The first volume is already available, with a second scheduled to be released soon.
In May 2014, Pompa-Baldi completed live performances of all the Rachmaninoff Concertos and Paganini Rhapsody with the Cape Town Philharmonic. In January 2015, he performed a recital at the First Lang Lang International Piano Festival in Shenzhen, China.
In March 2015, he is scheduled to perform all the Beethoven Concertos in Fresno, CA, under the baton of Maestro Theodore Kuchar. Other upcoming engagements include the Cheyenne Symphony (Respighi Piano Concerto), Nova Scotia Symphony (Rachmaninoff Second and Third Piano Concertos), and recitals in Wenzhou and Xiamen (China), San Jose, CA, Todi, and the island of Sardinia, Italy.
A Steinway artist, Mr. Pompa-Baldi is on the piano faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music.
He is the founder and faculty member of the Todi International Music Masters, a summer Festival in Italy, and sits on the juries of the most prestigious piano competitions of the world.