The first Albanian pianist Tonin Guraziu was born in Shkodra in 1908 in a merchants’ family. Tonin Guraziu moved with his family to Italy in 1912, where he completed primary and secondary school.

Amazed by the Italian art and by the piano concerts that he could attend together with his family, Tonin Guraziu gave the first signs of talent, thus connecting with music, in an eternal love, which would never betray him. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Bologna, where he was evaluated with the highest grade (30/30), in 1931, he returns to Albania, where he would start the series of rare concerts that would mark the start of the activity of the generation of first of professional Albanian artists.

Tonin Guraziu is the first Albanian pianist to graduate from a European Philharmonic Academy (La Regia Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna, 29.03.1931).
He is the concertmaster of the first stagings of operatic works in Albania. Guraziu is the first Albanian pianist who, in collaboration with the Tirana Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, performed the composer Grieg’s concerto for piano and orchestra in the Tirana People’s Theater in 1954. He is also the founder of the chair of art near the Artistic High School in Tirana. Tonin Guraziu is the founder of the Romanian chair at the Higher Institute of Arts.

The first concert, alongside Marija Kraja
It was the distant year 1936, the month of March, when the first opera concert in Albania was performed. The “Rozafa” cinema hall in Shkoder was overcrowded. Soprano Marie Paluca (Kraja) and pianist Tonin Guraziu would perform in front of a very enthusiastic audience. The first classical music concert was also held in Albania. Not only great world composers, such as Liszt and Chopin, but also some songs from Shkodra arranged for piano. Undisputed success! The Shkodra art lovers witnessed this turning point in the history of music in Albania. Now the road seems to be open! 

The magic of Tefta Tashko Koço
The first time he heard her voice was in 1936. It was in Tirana, where Tefta Tashko was giving a concert. He confesses to his diary: “She sang very well, she was elegant and educated in Paris”. A year later, together with the soprano Tefta Tashko, they performed a concert near Radio Bari-Italy on the occasion of the opening of the “Fiera di Levante” fair. In 1938, they held a concert together in Elbasan. At the beginning of 1939, on the eve of the invasion of Albania by the fascists, they undertook a tour in the Southern Albania (Durrës, Kavajë, Fier and Vlorë). The pianist constantly confesses to the newspaper, after this tour around the country: “In Vlora, the audience was warmer”. These concerts in Albania were followed by the wide participation of a group of artists in an international artistic event, “Maggio Fiorentino”, in May 1939, in Florence.

Although for decades, the pianist Tonin Guraziu, who graduated from the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna, in the distant year 1931, was a teacher at our conservatory, his compositions have not reached the stage. They are piano pieces created on purpose, to leave out the lyrics, thus refusing to sing to communism.

The piano pieces composed by the pianist Guraziu, during the period of the dictatorship in Albania, are published for the first time in the book “Tonin Guraziu, a life on the piano” by Filip Guraziu, in collaboration with the well-known artists Robert Radoja and Adelina Hoxha in in 2007.

/k.s/