Guitar competition: the history

The Classical Guitar Competition entitled City of Alessandria was first held in 1968 on the occasion of the celebration of the 800th anniversary of the foundation of the city. The promoter of the initiative, the first of its kind in Italy, was Dr. Michele Pittaluga, the internationally famous musicologist from Alessandria, who had previously created one of the first chairs of classical guitar music at the Antonio Vivaldi music lyceum where he was the principal and which, thanks to his interest, later became a state Conservatory. The Honorary President of the Jury for the first edition of the Award was the great Spanish master, Andres Segovia, then from the second edition to the present, the Venezuelan, Maestro Alirio Diaz. After the death of Dr. Pittaluga, in June 1995, the name of the competition was changed to Michele Pittaluga International Guitar Competition - Premio Citta di Alessandria and is organized by a special committee that has, as part of its constitution, the commitment of spreading the knowledge of the guitar repertoire, promoting new talents and supporting initiatives in favor of these goals. The Competition, that is held annually, will have its 45 ANNIVERSARY in the year 2012. In 2010 the City of Alessandria Award became member of the ISPA in New York and since 1981 has been a member of the Fédération Mondiale des Concours Internationaux de Musique with its headquarters in Geneva, and membership in UNESCO, and it is the only Italian guitar competition that belongs to this organization and the only one devoted to the guitar member of the WFIMC Executive Committee. Also since 1981, in response to the directives of the World Federation, the program of the Competition has been extended to repertoires with orchestra or string quartet. Over the years, many orchestras have played for the Competition, including the Angelicum of Milan, conducted by Mr. Bertola, the Turin Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mr Mariatti, the ATA Orchestra of Alessandria conducted by Mr Bertola and Mr Muller, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Piacenza conducted by Mr Rota, and the Nova Musica quartet. The famous Philharmonic Orchestra of Turin conducted the last few times by Mr. Ferrara and by Mr. Ignacio Yepes has played here for some years and lately the Vivaldi Philharmonic Orchestra. Since 1995 the Competition in Alessandria has been placed under the High Patronage of the President of the Republic of Italy and under the Patronage of Unesco Italian Commission. As we can see from the lists published overleaf the most important personalities representing a wide spectrum of the guitar world have taken part as members of the jury or as special guests.

The competition has awarded in 44 years many young guitarists who have then gone on to great concert careers. You only have to peruse the list of winners published in this centrefold to see this for yourselves. Among the winners of the last few years we would like to cite the Italian the Italian Lorenzo Micheli, the Cuban Marco Tamayo, Goran Krivokapic from Montenegro, Petrit Ceku from Croatia, Marcin Dylla from Poland, Flavio Sala and Adriano Del Sal from Italy, Marlon Titre from Holland , Artyom Dervoed and Irina Kulikova from Russia, Andras Csaki from Hungary. The last two winners were Anabel Montesinos from Spain in 2010 and Cecilio Perera from Mexico in 2011.The winner is offered a concert tour (30 recitals) in a number of Italian cities and other concerts abroad.

In 1997 a separate contest was created, entitled International Michele Pittaluga Composition Competition for Classical Guitar with the idea of expanding the contemporary guitar repertoire. For the first four years the contest envisaged works for solo guitar (1997), for guitar duo, guitar trio or guitar quartet (1998), for guitar solo with string quartet or quintet (1999), for guitar and orchestra (2000). From the year 2000, this competition is biennal. The 9th edition had been last June 2010. The winning work “Chameleon” by Kang Kyung Mook (South Korea) was performed on September 2010 in a world premiere by Marco Tamayo and the ACIES QUARTETT from Klagenfurt.The 10th edition is online..........