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Piano
Matti Raekallio's concert appearances have taken him as far afield as Japan, though he plays especially often in the USA. His engagements have included many of the leading music festivals, such as in Berlin's Klavierforum 1999, where he presented the 10 sonatas of Scriabin in one concert. His repertoire includes over 60 piano concertos, both standard repertoire including all the Beethoven, Brahms and Prokofieff concerti, and many rare works such as Hummel or Anton Rubinstein concertos, the Busoni Concerto, as well as several Finnish concertos. Solo recitals often concentrate on a single composer and genres, such as all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas, which he has performed as a series eight times in all. His Beethoven cycles included a sold-out, eight-concerts-in-eight-days marathon, broadcast nationwide by PBS, at the first Irving S. Gilmore Piano Festival in the USA. He also plays practically the complete keyboard works of Prokofiev, the entire output of Finnish composer Toivo Kuula (which he also recorded for MILS) and all the Chopin and Liszt etudes.
He has made close to 20 recordings, mostly for Ondine label; the three-CD-series containing the complete Prokofiev sonatas has won particular international recognition. His CDs of Englund's Piano Concerti (Ondine, 2003) and of Palmgren´s Third Concerto (Finlandia Label, 1989) were elected "Record of the Year" by the Finnish National Radio.
Helsinki-born Matti Raekallio has taught piano at the Sibelius Academy since 1978, where he was Acting Professor 1993-94, Associate Professor 1994-98 and Professor since 1998. He has also been Visiting Professor at the Western Michigan University (USA) 1984-85, the Berlin Hochschule der Künste 1998, the Rubin Academy in Tel Aviv and the Vienna Music Academy in 1999. He has given summer schools and other master classes in Finland and the USA.
Matti studied the piano at the Turku Music Institute 1967-72, in London with Maria Curcio 1972-73, at the Vienna Music Academy with Dieter Weber 1974-76 and the Leningrad Conservatoire 1977-78. He took a DocMus at the Sibelius Academy in 1996.
- Member of the Artistic Advisory Committee deciding on the Gilmore Award (USA) 1990-94.
- Artistic Director of the Sibelius Academy Concert Centre 1990-93.
- Member of the Research Council for Culture and Society of the Academy of Finland 1998-2000.
- Research with Professors John Sloboda, Richard Parncutt and Eric Clarke of the Universities of Sheffield and Keele since 1994 on the subject of pianists’ choice of fingering as a psychological process; publications in scientific international referee journals (Journal of Experimental Psychology, Music Perception, others).
- Member of the jury of a number of international piano competitions in Europe, China, Japan and the USA, notably the Shanghai International Competition 2003, the Beethoven Competition in Vienna 2001, the American Pianists Association Awards 2000, the PTNA in Tokyo 1999 and the Artur Rubinstein In Memoriam Competition (Poland) 1996.
- Scholarship from the Leonie Sonning Foundation (Denmark) 1980.
- 5-year state artist’s grant three times.
Contact details and further information
E-mail Matti Raekallio