Born: December 4, 1926 - New York, NY, USA
Died: September 6, 1990 - Red Bank, New Jersey, USA

The noted American harpsichordist and teacher, Fernando Valenti, studied piano with Jasé Iturbi. The he attended Yale University, where he took instruction in harpsichord with Ralph Kirkpatrick.

Fernando Valenti made his New York recital debut in 1950. His performances of the music of Domenico Scarlatti were highly praised. He also played Händel, to Bach, and modern composers as Elliott Carter, Schoenberg and George Gershwin. In 1978 he played one hundred Scarlatti sonatas on five consecutive evenings at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York. He was called by Time and by the New York Times, in varying formulations, the finest harpsichordist in the world.

In 1951 Fernando Valenti was appointed professor of harpsichord at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. He also taught at various other academic institutions.

Fernando Valenti recorded 330 Scarlatti sonatas, much of Bach, including the Goldberg Variations (BWV 988), and published the books The Harpsichord: A Dialogue for Beginners (1982) and A Performer's Guide to the Keyboard Partitas of J.S. Bach (1990).

Source: Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of 20^th Century Classical Musicians (1997); Obituary in National Review ( October 1990; Author: William F. Buckley, Jr.) © 2004 Gale Group
Contributed by Aryeh Oron (November 2006)

Fernando Valenti: Short Biography | Recordings of Non-Vocal Works

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