The Finnish pianist Antti Siirala has established himself as one of the finest pianists of his generation. His rich palette of sound colours, his differentiated and songful phrasing and expressive intelligence are praised frequently. Antti Siirala is the winner of numerous international competitions, including the Leeds International Piano Competition. In 1997 he won the International Beethoven Piano Competition Vienna as the youngest laureate in its history. This resulted in the performance of all Beethoven piano works at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in the following years and a focus on Beethoven in Siirala’s repertoire.

He performs with renowned conductors like Herbert Blomstedt, François-Xavier Roth, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Sakari Oramo, and with orchestras like the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Bamberger Symphoniker, the Radio Symphony Orchestras of HR, NDR, SWR and WDR, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Wiener Symphoniker, City of Birmingham Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra London, Residentie Orkest, Gothenburg Symphony, Finnish Radio Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo.

He regularly performs chamber music with partners like Carolin Widmann, Baiba Skride, Lawrence Power, Tanja Tetzlaff, Jan Vogler and Sharon Kam.
Milestones in his career were recitals in the piano series of the Berlin Philharmonic, at the Lucerne Festival and at the Ruhr Piano Festival, at concert halls like Cologne’s Philharmonie, London’s Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York or Zurich’s Tonhalle. Furthermore, Antti Siirala was artist in residence for three years at the Konzerthaus Dortmund, featured in its series Junge Wilde.

Recent highlights were his debut with the Belgrade Philharmonic with the Grieg piano concerto and the German premiere of Thomas Adès Three Berceuses with Lawrence Power at the Moritzburg Festival. The upcoming seasons will see Antti return to the Prague Symphony Orchestra under Pietari Inkinen, to the Nordic Chamber Orchestra and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra under Eva Ollikainen. He will also make his debut with the Odense Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken.

CD recordings, for which he received the Editor’s Choice Award of Gramophone Magazine several times, were published 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 is professor for piano at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich.