Antti Siirala’s international career was launched when he won First Prize in the 10th Vienna Beethoven competition as the youngest contestant, receiving the special award for the best performance of a late Beethoven sonata (op. 106 “Hammerklavier”). Subsequently he was awarded First Prize in the London International Piano Competition 2000, the Dublin International Piano Competition (with unanimous jury votes and a special prize for the best Mozart performance) and the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2003 (and the audience prize voted by viewers and listeners to the BBC broadcasts and the live audience in Leeds Town Hall).

Siirala’s debut in Brussels in December 2004 was a matchless success. Due to illness the conductor had to cancel on very short notice. Siirala agreed to lead the orchestra from the piano and saved the whole concert by playing in the second half Beethoven’s Diabelli variations in place of the orchestra. Immediately he was re-invited for concerts with the Orchestre National and for a recital by the Palais des Beaux Arts.

Standing in for sickened Emanuel Ax in February 2005, Siirala gave a sensational debut recital at the Cologne Philharmonie. According to the newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger “His recital will be remembered as one of the most outstanding events of this season”. Stepping in for indisposed famous colleagues seemed to be his brand mark throughout the season 2006/07: whether replacing Hélène Grimaud for concerts with the SWR-Sinfonieorchester Freiburg/Baden-Baden under Gielen with his musically expressive but symphonic interpretation of Brahms’ 2nd piano concerto, or Ivo Pogorelich at the Schumannfest Düsseldorf, Michail Pletnev at the Maggio Musicale or Yefim Bronfman with the Bamberg Symphony under Blomstedt, playing Brahms’ 1st piano concerto: everywhere press and audience were enthusiastic about his playing. Blomstedt even invited him to join him at the Baltic Sea Festival the same season and the Bamberg Symphony re-invited him to come back for four concerts with his compatriot Pietari Inkinen in November 2007.

Highlights of the season 2008/09 are tours through Finland, Germany, Austria and Asia where Siirala will perform with the Finnish Radio Symphony orchestra under Sakari Oramo, the SWR-Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg under François-Xavier Roth, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra. In November 2009 he gave his celebrated debut recital at the Lucerne Festival and will perform at the Moritzburg Festival in August 2009.

Antti Siirala works with many renowned conductors, among them Paavo Berglund, Herbert Blomstedt, Michael Boder, Stéphane Denève, Thierry Fischer, Mikko Franck, Michael Gielen, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Pietari Inkinen, Kristjan Järvi, Neeme Järvi, Fabio Luisi, Susanna Mälkki,  Gerhard Markson Sakari Oramo,  Eiji Oue,  Yutaka Sado,  Esa-

Pekka Salonen, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Lan Shui, Stefan Solyom, Osmo Vänskä, Mario Venzago and Hugh Wolff.

Siirala is and was invited to play with orchestras like Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Bamberger Symphoniker, Bochumer Symphoniker, hr-sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, Museumsorchester Frankfurt, SWR Sinfonieorchester Freiburg und Baden-Baden, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Wiener Symphoniker, Tonkünstlerorchester Wien, Orchestre National de Belgique, Orchestre National de Lille, City of Birmingham Symphony, Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Symphony London, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Irish National Symphony, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Residentie Orkest Den Haag, Swedish National Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony, Sinfonia Varsovia, St. Petersburger Symphoniker, Estonian National Symphony, Detroit Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra as well as with the orchestras of Melbourne and Queensland.

Major milestones on his steadily rising path of success were his recitals at the Lucerne Festival, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Schumannfest Düsseldorf, Europäische Wochen Passau and at the Festivals of Bolzano, Bath and Kilkenny as well as at the Cologne Philharmonie, Konzerthaus Dortmund, in Hannover Homburg/Saar, Mainz, Leverkusen, Wuppertal, London’s Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Tonhalle Zurich, Brussels, Aix-les-Bains, Porto, Milano, Imola, Detroit and at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. For a period of 3 years Antti Siirala was one of the artists in residence of the Konzerthaus Dortmund as part of the ‘Junge Wilde’ series. For the season 2009/10 he has, for instance, been re-invited by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and will perform as one of four pianists (next to P. L. Aimard, Lang Lang and M. Helmchen) in the piano series of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

His debut recording of Schubert transcriptions for NAXOS received excellent press reviews. For his recording of works by Brahms for ONDINE, he received 6 points out of 6 in the category interpretation from the Piano News magazine. For both recordings Siirala received the Gramophone Magazine's Editor's Choice award.

Beethoven and Brahms are at the core of Siirala’s repertoire, but his interest in contemporary music has resulted in first performances of works by Walter Gieseler, Kuldar Sink, Uljas Pulkkis and the premiere of the new piano concerto by Kalevi Aho. Kaja Saariaho’s first work for piano solo, “Balladen”, is part of his recital programme.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

How is it possible to take a musical warhorse as tired and broken-down as Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto and make it sound fresh and exciting again? It's that old Finnish magic, I guess.

Conductor Osmo Vänskä, the brilliant and energetic music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, began a two-week stint with the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday night. With him was his 30-year-old countryman, pianist Antti Siirala, and together they lent the piece enough rhythmic vigor and tonal beauty to turn a skeptic into a believer.....

That much was clear in the Tchaikovsky right from the opening measures, which thundered forth ardently but without a trace of sentimentality. And Siirala - making a superb Symphony debut as a replacement for Yundi Li, who withdrew last month because of an illness in his family - responded in kind, giving the music its full emotional range while avoiding the kind of fussiness that plagues lesser performances.

Siirala's touch was just dry enough to let the more intricate passagework register clearly, and his technical prowess ensured that there was something there worth hearing. And in the slow movement, he and Vänskä collaborated on a rhapsodic approach whose clear-eyed eloquence proved irresistible.

Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic