Riccardo Brengola (18 March 1917 – 16 May 2004) was an Italian violinist and professor. He was associated with early Italian chamber music and with the performance of contemporary Italian classical music. For several decades, he was the Professor Emeritus of chamber music at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, and from 1939 to 1966, he was the leader of the only piano quintet ensemble, the Quintetto Chigiano. His influence as a teacher also spread beyond Siena, through courses or classes at other major Italian Conservatories and to Ireland, Argentina, Spain and Japan. He maintained his career as a concert violin soloist and as an orchestral conductor, and was awarded the status of Commendatore of the Italian Republic in 1982.
Early life
Riccardo Brengola was born in Naples on 18 March 1917, the son of Carlo Brengola and Maria Esposito. His father was a cellist, who had a passion for making stringed instruments, but the extremely harsh economic conditions in the immediate post-war period caused the family to emigrate to Casablanca, Morocco in 1919. Carlo Brengola opened a music shop which sold instruments, sheet music and albums. When Riccardo turned three, his father decided to make him a violinist, making him his first instrument and teaching him. Child Riccardo Brengola performed Arabian music in public.
Musical education
At the age of six he was enrolled in the Casablanca Music Conservatory, where he was taught by Lucien Salin, a graduate of the Lucien Capet school. Riccardo also attended a Spanish primary school where he learned his fourth language: at this point he spoke Spanish, French, Arabic, and the Neapolitan dialect. He did not speak Italian.
At eleven, he graduated from the Conservatory, and in 1929, Mussolini offered him a bursary in Italy, which allowed him to move to Rome where he joined the classes of . A few years later, he graduated from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena.
Early career
Brengola took part in competitions and won prizes and titles, amongst them the Taormina, and also the Accademia Chigiana Prize for improvement. In 1937, he was the only Italian among the winners of the Eugene Ysaye First International Congress in Brussels (the Queen Elisabeth Competition). In 1946, he won the Geneva International Music Competition.
In 1938, he met the pianist Giuliana Bordoni in Siena, a student in Alfredo Casella's class at the Accademia Chigiana. At the time she was 18, and he was 21. They married in the summer of 1941 at the headquarters of the Accademia Chigiana, in the Palazzo Chigi Saracini chapel. Their marriage lasted almost 60 years, and three children were born. They formed a musical duo, and gave concerts through Italy and in Spain, France, Germany and Russia, and got accolades because of this. They recorded the complete Mozart Violin Sonatas for Radiotelevisione Italiana. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Brengolas had a trio with the cellist Benedetto Mazzacurati.
Quintetto Chigiano
In 1939, Count Chigi-Saracini decided to create a new chamber music group called Quintetto Chigiano, which was formed by choosing the best students of the Accademia. The people chosen were: Riccardo Brengola (first violin); Ferruccio Scaglia (second violin) (later Mario Benvenuti and Angelo Stefanato); Giovanni Leone (viola); Lino Filippini (cello); and Sergio Lorenzi (piano). While in this group, Brengola did not discontinue his solo performances and his activity as conductor alongside his engagement with chamber music. His work as a conductor, in particular, arose after he had studied in Paul van Kempen's classes at the Chigiana.
In 1946, Count Chigi-Saracini granted Brengola directorship of the Chamber Music courses at the Accademia Chigiana, a position which he held until 1997. By 1956, the Quintet had recently given more than a thousand concerts in countries including Italy, Germany, England, France, Holland, Belgium and Spain, had taken part in major European festivals, and had newly completed a highly successful tour of Central and South America: their repertoire reflected Brengola's preoccupations both with early Italian chamber music and with the works of contemporary composers.
Alberto Ginastera dedicated his Piano Quintet op. 29 (1963) to the Chigiano, who gave the first performance at the Teatro La Fenice in that year. In 1966, the year after Guido Chigi's death, the Quintetto was dissolved and was re-formed as the Sestetto Chigiano d'Archi (): in addition to Brengola, its membership included Felice Cusano (later Giovanni Guglielmo) (second violin); Mario Benvenuti and Tito Riccardi (violas); and Alain Meunier and Adriano Vendramelli (cellos).