About me
I am happily teaching harp
in the most prestigious conservatory
of music in Italy,
the “G. Verdi” in Milan.
The teaching system I use
is the result of decades of study and in-depth study
on Bach's repertoires,
on the historical styles and technical peculiarities
present in each of them.
On Teaching
The academic courses in our Conservatory are run by both harp teachers, according to a specialized and tasteful subdivision of knowledge transmission.
I am in charge of Early Music and Contemporary Music, courses that are present in both the three-year and two-year degrees in a dual capacity, as well as orchestral passages and Literature of the instrument.
The Early Music courses, which are unique and innovative in the Italian harp teaching scene, essentially involve the focused study of works by Bach and Händel with the aim of leading students toward sound, technical and harmonic-contrapuntal awareness that is completely avant-garde. These cultural tools, if well used, undoubtedly contribute to the increase of the personal potential employed to tackle any repertoire. After all, music writing has its roots in the past: knowing and practicing its evolutions will be able to make harpists more trained and prepared people as well.
The Instrument Literature course is presented in theoretical form and includes a module devoted to musical philology, also an original and novel topic in harp teaching.
Even in the curricula of the Propedeutic courses I include didactic Bach pieces in two voices, to lead students toward the academic courses with already, albeit basic, new awareness .
The aspects that emerge are substantial, and I could summarize them as follows:
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awareness and care in the emission of each individual sound and careful proprioceptive monitoring of finger and hand position;
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awareness of the multiple aspects that underlie the use of pedals to achieve the goal of their maximum quietness;
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recognition of harmonic areas and knowledge of the various damping systems;
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recognition of polyphonic writing and ability to manage it.
To play the harp is to have in one's hands a vast polyphonic potential that can be exploited with great mastery by knowing the varied practices and historical-philological realities that accompany each choice of repertoire.
Biography
After graduating with highest honors and improvement with the solo harp of the Israel Philharmonic, Cristiana Passerini began an intense solo, chamber and orchestral activity. Nextime, A. Toscanini, FontanaMix, I Virtuosi Italiani, I Solisti Dauni, Icarus, Octandre are some of the ensembles with which she has collaborated, also recording for the Dynamic and Arkadia labels. In orchestra, she has performed almost exclusively as first harp, playing with the OSI of Italian Switzerland, the Fondazione Toscanini of Parma, La Fenice of Venice, the Regio of Turin, the Arena of Verona, the Comunale of Bologna, the ORT Orchestra of Tuscany, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the RAI orchestras of Naples and Milan, the Teatro Petruzzelli, the ORV, the Internazionale d'Italia, the Sinfonica of Sanremo, and the Young IPO.
Always interested in research, experimentation and teaching, she has continued her studies on musical philology, aesthetics and praxis of music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: at the Conservatorio “G. Verdi” in Milan, where she holds the chair of harp, she has introduced into the academic curricula a unicum, namely the practice of the works of Bach and great coeval composers that have always been marginalized in the harp world. Promulgation activities related to these fields can be described as recordings, concerts, seminars, master classes, lectures and interviews for specialized networks.
Mention should be made in this regard of solo CDs published with the Milanese label La Bottega Discantica: the single “Georg Friedrich Händel, Harp Music” released in 2024 and awarded on MusicVoice with score 5/5, the box set “J.S. Bach, The French Suites” from 2020, awarded with 5 stars by Rivista Musica, and the single “J.S. Bach, Suites” from 2009 with booklets, respectively, by renowned musicologists such as Bruno Zanolini, Marco Moiraghi and Mario Baroni. In addition, he has published scores for Ut Orpheus and Rugginenti-Volontè, including Bach's Suite BWV 997, another first in the harp repertoire, which was selected as a compulsory test at the 50th International Harp Contest in Israel.
Cristiana Passerini has also always been active on the contemporary music front, which she teaches in academic courses; she has performed several premieres of composers of our time and has commissioned works from many composers for the harp quartet, a chamber group she founded with her students, thus promiting an increase in original repertoire. Some of these works were recorded on a CD for Tactus in 2018, with booklet by Giordano Montecchi.