Henri Sigfridsson
Biography
Henri Sigfridsson, born in 1974, has established himself on many important concert stages in Europe in recent years, including the Tonhalle Zurich, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the philharmonic halls of Cologne, Budapest and St. Petersburg and the Herkulessaal in Munich. His competition successes culminated in the Beethoven Competition Bonn 2005, where he won first prize, the audience prize and the chamber music prize.
Henri Sigfridsson has successfully taken part in many competitions. In 1994 he won first prize at the international ‘Franz Liszt Competition’ in Weimar and in 1995 the major Scandinavian competition ‘The Nordic Soloist Competition’. In 2000, he won second prize and the audience prize at the Géza Anda Competition in Zurich. In 2001, he received the sponsorship prize for young artists from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Finn has been a guest at many international festivals such as the Salzburg Festival, the Beethoven Festival Bonn, the Styriarte, the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Kissinger Sommer, the Augsburg Mozart Festival, the Menuhin Festival Gstaad and the Lockenhaus Festival.
He has appeared as a soloist in orchestral concerts with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Weimar State Orchestra, the RSO Helsinki, the Camerata Salzburg and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lawrence Foster, Sakari Oramo, Alexander Lazarev, Georg Alexander Albrecht, Volker Schmidt-Gertenbach and Dennis Russell Davies. He has been regularly invited to Japan since 2000.
In the field of chamber music, Sigfridsson has worked with Gidon Kremer, Ivry Gitlis, Mischa Maisky, Leonidas Kavakos, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Sol Gabetta and Johannes Moser, among others.
Various CD recordings by Henri Sigfridsson have been released, including F. X. Mozart piano concertos on the Swiss label Novalis, Sibelius piano works and Rachmaninov piano concertos nos. 2 and 3 on Hänssler Classic.
He began his studies at the conservatory in Turku, Finland. Further studies took him to the class of Prof Erik T. Tawaststjerna at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and to the master class of Prof Pavel Gililov at the Cologne Academy of Music. From 1995 to 1997, he also studied in the class of Lazar Berman in Weimar.
From 2008 to 2009, Henri Sigfridsson took up a professorship for piano music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. From 2010 to 2011 he was a professor at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin. Since April 2011 he has been Professor of Piano at the Folkwang University of the Arts.
