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IAN 7/17/25, Great Women of Music - Chiara Massini, Superb Harpsichordist [1]
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Date: 2025-07-16
This is another chapter in our Music As Therapy series. Enjoy! And if you're busy just play the vids to relax.
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Chiara Massini is an amazing harpsichordist in today’s classical music world. There are few women and even fewer Master Clavicembalists. A quick note here for music lovers: Playing the harpsichord accurately is technically more difficult than the piano. The reason is the harpsichord is a plucked instrument and touch must be much more precise than on a piano with its yielding, flexible action. Each key on the harpsichord is more like a switch; either you trip it or you don’t. So please admire the incredibly exacting technique of great harpsichordists who play long, difficult pieces without a single slip of a key.
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Chiara Massini was born in Rome in 1971, where she studied piano at the Ottorino Respighi Conservatory with Prof. Enzo Stanzani, and musicology at the University of Salzburg . After graduating, she attended various masterclasses in Salzburg, Austria and began to explore early music intensively. This path led Mrs. Massini to Vienna, where she studied harpsichord and basso continuo with Prof. Gordon Murray and Augusta Campagne at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts , graduating with honors.
In addition to several recordings for Austrian, Italian, Canadian and Spanish radio, she has performed extensively as a soloist and chamber musician at various festivals and concert series in Europe, Canada and Brazil, and Lebanon including the "Al Bustan" festival in Beirut, the Musikverein in Vienna, "I concerti del Gonfalone" and "I Concerti del Quirinale" (The Quirinal Palace) in Rome and at the Dresden Music Festival.
The Italian press writes of her: "From the very first phrase, she distinguished herself as an exceptional artist, bringing the selected works of Italian composers to life. The melodic charm and perfect proportions of Domenico Zipoli's music unfolded their full radiance under Massini's sensual grasp."
in August 2005, she was invited to Switzerland to perform Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which she recorded for Symphonia in the summer of 2006. This production was very well received by audiences and critics alike: "Chiara Massini demonstrates that she can grasp the listener and captivate them. She doesn't let go!” (From Germany’s Alte Musik Aktuell .) She was also invited by the Charitable Society of Friends (Florida) to make her US debut in November 2008.
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Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C minor, WTC I (Well-Tempered Clavier Book I). This sounds almost as fast as Wendy Carlos’ version in 'Switched-on Bach' played by a computer through a synthesizer, but this is a human, and an impassioned one!
Dad joked about this, but it’s profoundly true: “Human beans are better, ‘cause computers don’t know beans!”
The famous Prelude from Partita in E Major BWV 1006 , arranged by Leonhardt from Bach's Violin Suite in E Major, simply sublime:
Notice both keyboards of the Cembalo used for contrast of different parts. They can also be connected for greater volume.
Here’s Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in C Minor BWV 906 , with incomplete fugue (he never finished it; see if you can, if you improvise or compose Baroque music). Nonetheless her Fantasia is so amazing it’s worth listening to here. Both keyboards of Cembalo used for differing volume and different set of strings activated. She really gets into the chromatic fugue, too, this lovely lady is no robot!
Notice she’s sight-reading all this. The keyboard is part of her, perfect control!
Partita in A Minor BWV 827 :
This is one I had to learn as a piano student, and it’s not easy! Although not quite as virtuosic as the leading ones. The Corrente at 4:22 rips though. So does the Burlesca at 7:42 and Scherzo at 8:50.
Prelude and Fugue in D Minor WTC I, BWV 851 , this rocks!
The Fugue (2nd, slower movement) is NOT easy, notice how the touch (legato/marcato) changes in the course of the fugal statement and she keeps this phrasing and the trill towards the end consistent throughout the movement. It ends with the subject in 3rds in contrary motion, both hands (4 voices).
This virtuoso Fugue in A Minor BWV 944 was first published solo, later incorporated into a Prelude & Fugue transcribed by Franz Liszt. Beautifully done here on a 2-manual harpsichord or cembalo by Mrs. Massini:
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