SPONSORED: CD Spotlight. A Fantastic Collection. Penelope Cave Panorama CD. Little-known harpsichord gems, strongly recommended by Alice McVeigh.
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SPONSORED: CD Spotlight. An Encyclopedic Recital - Elizabeth Moak plays Judith Lang Zaimont, heard by the late Howard Smith.
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Controversial Italian musicologist, teacher and music critic Piero Buscaroli was born in Imola on 21 August 1930, the son of Latin scholar Corso Buscaroli. He studied organ, harmony and counterpoint with Ireneo Fuser at the Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini but graduated in Law and worked in journalism.
He wrote music criticism for Il Borghese from 1955 until 1977, then was director of the newspaper Roma (1972-5) and from 1979 he wrote for Il Giornale. Some of his journalism is written under the pseudonyms Hans Sachs and Piero Santerno.
He wrote several books on music history. Bach (1985) was republished more than twenty times. Beethoven (2004), a 1,350 page tome which was the result of five years' study, changed performance practice. La morte di Mozart (1996) suggests that Mozart deliberately left his Requiem unfinished, for contractual reasons.
Piero Buscaroli died in Bologna on 15 February 2016, aged eighty-five.