Programme

Brahms - Violin Sonata No.1 in G, Op.78

Prokofiev - Violin Sonata No.2 in D, Op.94a

Arthur Keegan - YCAT Composer Fellow Commission: TBC

Clara Schumann - 3 Romances for violin & piano, Op.22

Ravel Violin Sonata No.2 in G

Based between London and Switzerland, Matteo Cimatti has appeared alongside several European orchestras and at numerous festivals, and is also an accomplished and enthusiastic chamber player. In May 2025, he was selected as one of the winners at the Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) International Final Auditions.

Upcoming highlights include his debut at the Alte Oper Frankfurt, Internationales Musikfestival Heidelberger Fruhling, a return to Wigmore Hall and the Brahms concerto with the London Firebird Orchestra.

In 2024, Matteo graduated from the Haute École Musique de Lausanne in Switzerland, where he most recently studied with Janine Jansen and Tomo Keller. He has appeared as a soloist alongside several orchestras, including the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, and has performed in numerous festivals and concert seasons such as the Sion Festival, Amici della Musica di Firenze, Festival dei Due Mondi, Musikdorf Ernen and the Ticino Music Festival among others.

Matteo has received awards from the Rahn Kulturfonds and the Concours d’Interprétation Musicale de Lausanne, and has been a prize winner in leading competitions including the Concours Feast of Duos International, Premio Postacchini International Violin, and Premio Crescendo.

A chamber music enthusiast from a very young age, Matteo enjoys a rich and varied concert activity as a chamber player. He is a founding member of the Wendel Quartet, a piano quartet based in Basel.

Matteo plays a 1769 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin kindly loaned to him through the Beare’s International Violin Society by a generous sponsor.

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Francesco Granata is an Italian pianist.

Highly active both in solo and chamber music settings, his collaborations include Trio Eclipse, an ensemble based in Basel that he joined in 2024 and Wendel Quartet, of which he is a founding member. Additionally, he frequently performs duo recitals with various musical partners.

Winner of numerous piano competitions, he resulted First Prize at the “Premio Venezia” in 2017, which led to many solo recitals across Italy and abroad. Subsequently, he was a Laureate at the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition (2021), won Second Prize at the Rahn Musikpreis (2024), was a Finalist at the Montreal International Piano Competition (2021), and reached the final stages of the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (2022). Since then, Francesco has performed in solo recitals and chamber music ensembles in Italy, the United States, Switzerland, France, Spain, Austria, Germany, and India, giving concerts in renowned venues such as KKL in Lucerne, the Experimental Theatre of the NCPA in Mumbai, the Opera House in Bordeaux, the Musical Arts Center in Bloomington (USA), the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice, among others.

At the age of 13, Francesco made his debut as a soloist with orchestra and has since performed with the Luzern Sinfonieorchester, the Orchestra of Teatro La Fenice, I Pomeriggi Musicali, IU Philarmonic Orchestra, among others, working with conductors such as Tung-Chieh Chuang, Jonathan Webb, Arthur Fagen, Amedeo Monetti, Cosimo Bombardieri, Stefano Ligoratti, and Michele Spotti.

In 2018, the magazine “Suonare News” released his first CD, featuring a repertoire ranging from Mozart to Debussy. In 2015, he recorded a DVD for Limenmusic studios of Lachner’s version for piano and string quintet of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. In 2023, Italian magazine “Amadeus” published a CD featuring Martucci’s Trios recorded with the “DaVinci Ensemble.”

​He has attended various masterclasses with Pavel Gililov, Robert Levin, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Alberto Nosè, Giovanni Bellucci, Scott McBride Smith, Malcolm Bilson, Rolf Plagge, and Andrea Lucchesini. In 2023, he was selected by Maria João Pires to participate in one of her “Partitura Project” workshops.

​Francesco graduated at 17 from “G. Verdi” Conservatory in Milan with top marks and special mention. In 2019, he completed the MasterCourse Diploma at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome under the guidance of Benedetto Lupo, and in 2023, he obtained the Artist Diploma from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington (USA), studying with Roberto Plano. He currently resides in Basel, where he is pursuing his second Master in Music Pedagogy at the Musik Akademie, after having earned the Master in Performance (with a minor in Jazz) at the same school in June 2025, under the guidance of Claudio Martínez Mehner.

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