Photo Manfred Esser
In December 2005, Henri Sigfridsson was awarded first prize and the audience prize in the 1st International Beethoven Competition Bonn presented by Deutsche Telekom AG, and shared the special prize for chamber music with semifinalist Hyo Sun-Lim from South Korea.
The pianist from Finland, born in 1974, has been a guest for many years at international festivals such as the Augsburg Mozart Festival, Klavierfestival Ruhr, Lucerne Festival, Musical Olympus in St. Petersburg, Kissinger Sommer, Davos Festival, Festival der Raritäten Husum, Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus Festival or the Ravinia Festival (USA). He has appeared several times in concert with well-known European symphony orchestras including the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, Musikkollegium Winterthur, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, MDR Orchestra Leipzig, Belgrade Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lille, Weimarer Staatskapelle, Munich Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Academica Salzburg and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under famous directors like Georg Alexander Albrecht, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lawrence Foster or Dennis Russel Davies. Since 2000 he has regularly been performing in Japan and was invited for a major tour of the country in the 2004/2005 season.
In July 2000 he won second prize and the audience prize at the Géza Anda Competition in Zurich. In 1994 he won first prize at the international Franz Liszt Competition in Weimar (Germany) and in 1995 he won the big Scandinavian Nordic Soloist Competition. In 2001 he received the North Rhine-Wesphalia incentive award for young artists.
Henri Sigfridsson feels a very deep commitment to chamber music – he has performed with artists such as Boris Pergamenschikow, Leonidas Kavakos, and Gidon Kremer. In 2003, he founded a trio with the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaya and the cellist Sol Gabetta which soon established itself on international concert stages.
Henri Sigfridsson first studied at the Turku Conservatory and in Erik T. Tawaststjerna’s class at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. In 1995 he joined Pavel Gililov’s class at the Academy of Music in Cologne. From 1995 to 1997 he also attended Lazar Berman’s master class in Weimar.
Henri Sigfridsson’s repertoire with orchestra
Bach, J.S.: D minor, F minor
Beethoven: 1-5, Chorfantasie
Brahms: 1. and 2.
Chopin: 1. and 2.
Gál: Concertino
Grieg: A minor
Hakola Kimmo: Piano Concerto
Haydn: D major
Hindemith: 4 Temperaments
Hummel: A minor
Liszt: 1. and 2., Malediction
Mendelssohn: 1. G minor, 2. D minor
Mozart, Franz Xaver: 1. C major, 2. E flat major
Mozart W.A.: KV39 B flat major, 242 F major, 271 E flat major, 365 E flat major,
413 F major, 414 A major, 415 C major, 449 E flat major, 466 d minor,
467 C major, 482 E flat major, 488 A major, 491 C minor, 503 C major, 537 D major,
595 B flat major
Palmgren: 2. "The River"
Prokofjiev: 3. C major
Rachmaninov: 2., 3. and Paganini-Rhapsodie
Schostakovitch: 1. (with the trumpet)
Schumann, R.: A minor
Strauss, R.: Burleske
Tschaikovsky: 1. and 2.
...and Henri is fast in learning new concertos.....