Pianist Aldo Orvieto has explored a great deal of neglected repertory from Italy and beyond, both in performance and on recordings. He is a significant champion of contemporary music.

Orvieto was born in Padua in 1961. He attended the Venice Conservatory and went on to study with Aldo Ciccolini, who became an important mentor. Orvieto has made appearances as a concerto soloist with orchestras around Italy and beyond, including the RAI (Italian Radio) Symphony Orchestras in various cities, the Teatro La Fenice Orchestra in Venice, and the Ensemble Accroche Note in Strasbourg, France. He has performed especially often on radio around Europe, including on Radio France, the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, and the Belgian and Swedish Radio National Radio networks; many of these performances have been released as recordings. A champion of contemporary music, Orvieto co-founded the Ex Novo Ensemble in 1979. He has participated in world premieres of works by Bruno Maderna, Salvatore Sciarrino, Camillo Togni, and other prominent contemporary Italian composers. Orvieto is a reliable presence at European summer festivals, especially those devoted to contemporary music. He has appeared at the Biennale di Venezia, the Berlin Biennale, and the Antasten festival in Heilbronn, Germany, among many others.

Orvieto is noted for his recording catalog, which numbers more than 70 items. He has recorded for Dynamic, Naxos, Stradivarius, and many other labels. Orvieto specializes in neglected repertory, especially Italian music of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Also active as a vocal accompanist, he backed contralto Sara Mingardo on a 2011 album, La Sensitiva, of rarely heard songs by Respighi. He has recorded several albums of contemporary music, including a complete cycle of Togni's piano music for Naxos, as well as releases devoted to Malipiero and Bazzini; in 2020, with Ciccolini and Marco Rapetti, he issued an album of two-piano music of Busoni that had been recorded some years earlier. ~ James Manheim, Rovi