Cristian Monti began his musical studies with his mother, Manuela Innocenti, and graduated in piano with Carlo Palese and Konstantin Bogino and composition with Pietro Rigacci from the Conservatoires of Lucca and Padua.
In his book “De Benedetti Michelangeli à Argerich – Trente ans avec les grands pianistes”, the Italian critic Luca Ciammarughi praised him as an exceptional talent.
After studying with Françoise Thinat and Henri Barda at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, he was admitted to the Académie de Musique Française, where he took masterclasses with Jean-Philippe Collard, Pascal Rogé and Michel Beroff. He took contemporary music classes with Maria Grazia Bellocchio (Divertimento Ensemble in Milan). He has also benefited from the advice of Aquiles Delle Vigne (at the Salzburg Mozarteum), Ralph van Raat and Pavel Gililov.
He has won several competitions, including second prize in the Virtuoso Grand Prix, which enabled him to give the prize-giving concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
He has performed in such venues as the Salle Cortot and the Bibliothèque musicale La Grange-Fleuret in Paris, the Auditorium Pollini in Padua (Amici della Musica), the University of Rome 3, the Sala Donatoni and Villa Simonetta in Milan (Pianocity), Palazzo Vecchio in Florence (World Bach Fest), the University of Alicante and the Society of Musicians in Edinburgh.
In 2021, he recorded his first CD for Galaxie-Y, devoted to the music of F.Geminiani and G.F. Haendel, which was very well received by the critics (Radio France, Rai Radio 3, Piano News-Düsseldorf).
His second CD, devoted to works by Scriabin and Jacques Lenot, was released in 2024 and awarded five stars (Coup de coeur) by Classica magazine. The concert presenting the disc, featuring the world premiere of Rilke-Fragmente by J. Lenot, at the Salle Cortot in Paris, was acclaimed by the critics (ResMusica and Anaclase).
“The precision and clarity of his interpretation of Geminiani’s Pièces de clavecin are breathtaking. He responds with the same finesse, but sometimes also with a slightly dramatic attitude, to Handel’s Suite No. 8, where strong accents and perfect phrasing ensure clear lines.”
Helmut Peters. Piano News -Düsseldorf
This dreamlike framework of disparate elements is perfectly interpreted by Cristian Monti, whose sovereign phrasing and well-dosed dramatism are marvellous in Lenot, as they are in Scriabin’s crepuscular Preludes Op.74 and in an anthological Sonata No.10, where the trills of the visionary Russian appear in all their haunted fever. What more could you ask for than inhabited works brought to life by a pianist in a state of grace?
Romaric Gergorin, Classica