Corrado Galzio

Corrado Galzio, (; Noto, November 3, 1919 – Noto, April 19, 2020) was a noted musician and piano player who founded the International Music Festival of Noto and the Italian Music Conservatory in Caracas. He promoted the popularization of musical culture as well as initiating the interchanges between Italy and Venezuela. In Venezuela, he carried out an intense career as an artist, teacher, and director of successful radio and television programmes. He is widely recognised as the father of chamber music culture in the Latin American country. At the age of eight years old, he moved to Milan in order to pursue his studies. From there, he completed his musical education in Rome, at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory under the guidance of Maestro Renzo Silvestri. His artistic merits, representing life in Italy at the time, stood out from others. For Radio Roma, he implemented a live classical music programme, the first of its kind, and was awarded the Premio Littoriale for piano in 1940. In the same year, he went to war as a volunteer.

Venezuela (1947–2020) In 1947, Galzio emigrated to Venezuela. His first years of activity in this new country were marked by a pioneering fervor. He taught in Maracaibo at the Music Academy, and in San Cristobal, was the director of the State Conservatory. While in Caracas, Galzio founded the Italian Music Conservatory and the Monte Sacro Cultural Centre, which was a venue for concerts and meetings with personalities of the international music scene. Eminent Italian colleagues from the Santa Cecilia Academy, one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, answered his calls. Their cooperation and performances brought prestige to the Conservatory, and with these musicians, he undertook an intense concert activity that had him performing on the stages of the world. The Monte Sacro Cultural Centre is still hosting the Caracas Symphonic Municipal Orchestra.

In 1952, he founded the radio programme Temas con Variaciones, which, with the advent of television, would be broadcast live on the most important national television channel as well. Temas con Variaciones spread all over the country and aired the live concerts of various chamber ensembles created and led by Maestro Galzio. The programme also presented interviews with the most well-known and popular celebrities from Europe and America on cultural and current events topics. Radio Capital Caracas continues broadcasting Temas con Variaciones even today, now edited by Professor Einar Goyo Ponte from the University Andrés Bello. Due to its long and unbroken activity, this broadcast constitutes one of the country's oldest and most prominent cultural institutions.

Concert activity His radio commitment and the management of various musical institutions in Italy and in Venezuela have always been associated with Maestro Corrado Galzio. In addition, he had a strong commitment to an intense concert activity that brought him to perform with many international exponents of chamber music, among them Gaspar Cassadó, Antonio Yanigro, Ricardo Odnoposoff, Dino Asciolla, Berle Senofsky, Suna Kan, Uto Ughi, Corrado Romano, Michel Rabin, lona Brown, Thèrèse Green-Coleman, Lisa Della Casa, Salvatore Accardo, Ruggero Ricci, Christian Ferras, and Pierre Fournier.

On November 3, 2019, the city of Noto celebrated the one-hundredth birthday of the maestro with a great ceremony organized by the Municipal Administration and the City of Noto Concerts Association, held at the Tina Di Lorenzo theatre. During the event, the Mayor of Noto, paid tribute to the Maestro piano player, founder of the Noto Musica Festival, in the name of the city. The president of the Concerts Association, Alberto Frasca, retraced the musical history of these one hundred years at Noto that intertwines with the biography of the maestro. The evening ended with the video message wishes by Salvatore Accardo, Uto Ughi , Ennio Morricone, and with the reading of a tribute by the Santa Cecilia Academy masters, touring companions, and the Venezuelan Embassy in Italy.

Corrado Galzio died in his Sicilian hometown of Noto on April 19, 2020. and in Venezuela.

The Tema con variaciones radio programme dedicated a special broadcast to him that featured a selection of his musical performances.

Awards Knight of the Italian Republic, 1956 Award

Oleandro D'Oro from Noto Municipality, 1997

Italia nel Mondo, 1998 Award

Noto Excellence Award, 2015

Andrés Bello Award (1978 and 1995) for his contribution to Venezuela cultural development

Orden Francisco de Miranda acknowledging his contribution to the country advancement

L'Ordre du Merite Culturel from Polish People's Republic for his contribution and dissemination of Polish culture and art