Lorenzo Ghielmi (I)

Born in Tradate, he is one of the most authoritative Italian organists and harpsichordists, renowned for his deep knowledge of Renaissance and Baroque music and for being among the leading interpreters of Johann Sebastian Bach’s organ and harpsichord works. His career has developed in parallel across concert performance, musicological research, and teaching.

Ghielmi began dedicating himself to early instruments and historical performance practice in the 1980s, founding the ensemble Il Giardino Armonico in 1983, with which he helped disseminate the Italian Baroque repertoire worldwide. In 2005 he created the group La Divina Armonia, with which he recorded rare and previously unpublished works, such as Francesco Feo’s oratorio Passio secundum Ioannem. He has performed at major international festivals and in leading concert halls across Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea, and the Americas, and has produced more than fifty recordings for labels such as Passacaille, Winter & Winter, Harmonia Mundi, and Teldec.

Alongside his concert activity, Ghielmi has published studies on Nicolaus Bruhns, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and seventeenth‑century organ building, contributing to a deeper understanding of Baroque performance practice. He taught organ and harpsichord at the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado in Milan, and from 2005 to 2015 held the organ chair at the prestigious Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel. He has also taught at the Hochschule für Musik in Lübeck and in Trossingen.

His interpretation of Bach is considered a benchmark: he has performed the complete organ works on the Ahrend organ of San Simpliciano in Milan and has appeared multiple times at the Leipzig Bach Festival, performing also at the Thomaskirche. His work unites scholarly rigor with interpretive sensitivity, making him an international reference point in the field of early music.