Antti Siirala
The Finnish pianist Antti Siirala has established himself as one of the best pianists of his generation. His rich palette of tonal shadings, his differentiated, singing phrasing and creative intelligence are praised time and again. Antti Siirala has won prizes at numerous international competitions, including the Leeds International Piano Competition. In 1997 he won the International Beethoven Piano Competition Vienna as the youngest prize-winner in its history. This resulted in performances of all Beethoven’s piano works at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and a Beethoven focus in Siirala’s repertoire in the following years.
He performs with renowned conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, François-Xavier Roth, Esa-Pekka Salonen or Sakari Oramo and orchestras such as the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Radio Symphony Orchestras of HR, NDR, SWR and WDR, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the Residentie Orkest, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony and the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo. Antti Siirala’s chamber music partners include Carolin Widmann, Baiba Skride, Lawrence Power, Tanja Tetzlaff, Jan Vogler and Sharon Kam.
Milestones were recitals in the piano series of the Berlin Philharmonic, at the Ruhr Piano Festival and the Lucerne Festival, in concert halls such as the Cologne Philharmonie, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Metropolitan Museum New York or the Tonhalle Zurich. In addition, Antti Siirala was Artist in Residence in the Junge Wilde series of the Konzerthaus Dortmund for three years.
More recently, Antti Siirala made his debut with the Belgrade Philharmonic with the Grieg Piano Concerto and played the German premiere of Thomas Adès Three Berceuses with Lawrence Power at the Moritzburg Festival. In the coming seasons he follows re-invitations to the Nordic Chamber Orchestra and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra under Eva Ollikainen as well as to the Prague Symphony Orchestra under Pietari Inkinen, among others. Further invitations lead him to the Odense Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie Saarbrücken.
CD recordings for which he has received the Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice Award several times have been released by Sony (Schubert’s Trout Quintet with newly composed variations) and Naxos (works by Brahms and Schubert transcriptions). Other recordings include the last three Beethoven sonatas (AVI-Music) and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto (SONY, with The Knights, Colin Jacobsen and Jan Vogler).
Antti Siirala teaches as professor of piano at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich.