Maria Tipo

Maria Tipo (23 December 1931 – 10 February 2025) was an Italian pianist who made an international career after she won the 1949 Geneva International Music Competition and came in third at the Queen Elisabeth Competition. She revived the music of Muzio Clementi and was known for playing and recording music by Scarlatti, Bach, Beethoven and Chopin. She taught at conservatories, Conservatoire de Musique de Genève, Bolzano Conservatory, Florence Conservatory and Scuola di Musica di Fiesole.

Life and career Tipo was born in Naples on 23 December 1931.

Tipo played with strength and virtuosity; the critic recalled her playing as a teenager: "Her agility was incredible, and her precision greater than the volcanic Martha Argerich". He saw her in the "tradition of Italian interpreters that begins with Toscanini and includes Carlo Zecchi, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Maurizio Pollini, Salvatore Accardo, Riccardo Muti, Claudio Abbado: interpreters who remain masters of their emotions and achieve the effect they want on the public." He concluded: "Maria Tipo is a knight errant, always ready to do battle for her ideal, even when this ideal takes the form of the Devil. [Her] ideal is beauty. There are other ways to make music, but this is certainly not the least of them."

As a dedicated teacher, Tipo served as professor at the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève and the in the 1960s and 1970s, and from 1980 at the Florence Conservatory and the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole where she held a chair for piano from 1987 to 2009. Frank Lévy, , , and Giovanni Nesi .