Michele Campanella is an Italian pianist who specialises in the music of Franz Liszt, and is also a conductor.
Campanella was born in Naples in 1947. He won the Alfredo Casella Prize at age 19, after studying with Vincenzo Vitale. This led to an international performing career, taking him to many countries, regularly appearing at international music festivals such as Lucerne, Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Taormina, Turin, and Pesaro, and working with such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Vernon Handley, Eliahu Inbal, Sir Charles Mackerras, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Georges Prêtre, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Thomas Schippers, Hubert Soudant, and Christian Thielemann.
He is also a regular chamber music player, and has often appeared with Salvatore Accardo, Rocco Filippini and Claudio Desderi.
He has devoted complete seasons to a single composer—Franz Liszt, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms.
He has recorded the complete works of Beethoven, Mozart's piano concertos, the complete variations by Brahms, and the complete Hungarian Rhapsodies and many of the major transcriptions of Liszt.