About me
I am happily teaching harp at the most prestigious Italian Conservatory of Music, the G. Verdi in Milan.
The teaching system I use is the result of decades of study and in-depth study of Bach's repertoires, historical styles and technical peculiarities in each of them.
The academic courses in our Conservatory are run by both harp teachers, according to a specialized and tasteful subdivision of knowledge transmission.
I am in charge of Early Music and Contemporary Music, courses that are present in both the three-year and two-year degrees in a dual capacity, as well as orchestral passages and Literature of the instrument.
The Early Music courses, which are unique and innovative in the Italian harp teaching scene, essentially involve the focused study of works by Bach and Händel with the aim of leading students toward sound, technical and harmonic-contrapuntal awareness that is completely avant-garde. These cultural tools, if well used, undoubtedly contribute to the increase of the personal potential employed to tackle any repertoire. After all, music writing has its roots in the past: knowing and practicing its evolutions will be able to make harpists more trained and prepared people as well.
The Instrument Literature course is presented in theoretical form and includes a module devoted to musical philology, also an original and novel topic in harp teaching.
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Even in the curricula of the Propedeutic courses I include didactic Bach pieces in two voices, to lead students toward the academic courses with already, albeit basic, new awareness .
The aspects that emerge are substantial, and I could summarize them as follows:
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awareness and care in the emission of each individual sound and careful proprioceptive monitoring of finger and hand position;
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awareness of the multiple aspects that underlie the use of pedals to achieve the goal of their maximum quietness;
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recognition of harmonic areas and knowledge of the various damping systems;
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recognition of polyphonic writing and ability to manage it.
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To play the harp is to have in one's hands a vast polyphonic potential that can be exploited with great mastery by knowing the varied practices and historical-philological realities that accompany each choice of repertoire.
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Biography
Cristiana Passerini holds the chair of Harp at the G. Verdi Conservatory of Milan, where she also teaches ancient praxis, contemporary music, orchestral passages and literature of the instrument.
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After graduating in Harp with highest honors from the Conservatory of her hometown, Bologna, and perfecting her with Solo Harp of the IPO, she began an intense solo, chamber and orchestral activity. Nextime, A. Toscanini, FontanaMix, I Virtuosi Italiani, I Solisti Dauni, Icarus, Octandre are some of the ensembles she has collaborated with, also recording for the Dynamic and Arkadia labels.
In the orchestra she has performed almost exclusively as First Harp. Mention should be made of the OSI of Italian Switzerland, the Fondazione Toscanini of Parma, La Fenice of Venice, the Regio of Turin, the Arena of Verona, the Comunale of Bologna, the ORT Orchestra of Tuscany; in the 1980s, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the RAI orchestras of Naples and Milan, the Teatro Petruzzelli, the ORV, the Internazionale d'Italia, the Sinfonica of Sanremo, the Young IPO.
Since the 2000s, she has become interested in research and experimentation and has continued her studies, flanked by experts, on the aesthetics and praxis of music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She thus became the promoter of an innovative educational system that sees the inclusion in the curricula of works that are essential to the musician's training, primarily those of Bach and other great contemporary composers that have always been marginalized in the harp world, making use of musicological and philological assumptions.
From these insights came an equally innovative technical-executive method, which has been in operation for several years at the Conservatory where she teaches. Promulgation activities related to these fields can be described as CDs, concerts, seminars, master classes, lectures and interviews for specialized networks.
With the Milan label La Bottega Discantica, she has recorded several solo CDs on Baroque praxis: the single “Georg Friedrich Händel, Harp Music” released in 2024, the box set “J.S. Bach, The French Suites” in 2020 which was awarded 5 stars by the magazine Rivista Musica and the single “J.S. Bach, Suites” in 2009 with librettos, respectively, by renowned musicologists such as Bruno Zanolini, Marco Moiraghi and Mario Baroni.
In addition, she has published scores for Ut Orpheus and Rugginenti-Volontè, including Bach's Suite BWV 997, another premiere in the harp repertoire, which was selected as a compulsory test at the 50th International Harp Contest in Israel.
Cristiana Passerini is also operative on the contemporary front: in the performance of her traditional concert and orchestral profession, she has performed several premieres of composers of our time and, as a passionate teacher, has created a harp quartet with her students, allowing, in fact, an increase in the original repertoire for this new formation.
Several Italian composers have dedicated their works to the Laborintus Harp Quartet; some of them were recorded on a CD for Tactus in 2018, with booklet by Giordano Montecchi.
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