Photo: Outi Montosen
Olli Mustonen
Representation: General Management
“He gives his whole body to the performance every time...He gives his soul too. He is a living dream of pianism, having broken through an expressive barrier that other players do not know exists.” (The Sunday Times)
Olli Mustonen has a unique place on today’s music scene. As a pianist, he has challenged and fascinated audiences throughout Europe and America with his brilliant technique and startling originality. In his role as conductor, he founded the Helsinki Festival Orchestra and as a composer he forms part of a very special line of musicians whose vision is expressed as vividly in the art of re-creative interpretation as it is in their own compositions.
Born in Helsinki, he began his studies in piano, harpsichord and composition at the age of five. His first piano teacher was Ralf Gothoni. He subsequently studied piano with Eero Heinonen and composition with Einojuhani Rautavaara. As a recitalist he plays in all the world’s musical capitals, including Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New York, Tokyo and Vienna.
At the heart of both his piano playing and conducting is his life as a composer. Mustonen has a deeply held conviction that each performance must have the freshness of a first performance, so that audience and performer alike encounter the composer as a living contemporary. In this respect he recalls Mahler’s famous dictum, that tradition can be laziness, yet he is equally suspicious of the performance that seeks only to be different. This tenacious spirit of discovery leads him to explore many areas of repertoire beyond the established canon.
As a soloist, Mustonen has worked with most of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris and The Royal Concertgebouw, partnering conductors such as Ashkenazy, Barenboim, Blomstedt, Boulez, Chung, Dutoit, Eschenbach, Gergiev, Harnoncourt, Masur, Nagano, Salonen and Saraste. This season he appears a soloist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt and the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra under Valery Gergiev and his busy schedule includes recitals as far afield as the Edinburgh Festival, Milan and Tel Aviv. Mustonen is also increasingly making his mark as conductor; recent highlights include leading the Staatskapelle Weimar, West Australian Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra with whom he concludes his complete cycle of Beethoven piano concerti as soloist/director this season and he returns to the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, Northern Sinfonia and Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, Moscow.
Olli Mustonen’s recording catalogue is typically broad-ranging and distinctive. His release on Decca of Preludes by Shostakovich and Alkan received the Edison Award and Gramophone Award for the Best Instrumental Recording. In 2002 Mustonen signed a recording contract with Ondine. His releases on Ondine include Bach and Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues; a disc of Sibelius’ piano works; Mozart Violin Concertos with Pekka Kuusisto and Tapiola Sinfonietta; a selection of Prokofiev’s piano music; Rachmaninov Piano Sonata No. 1; Tchaikovsky The Seasons and Beethoven Piano Concerti as soloist / director with Tapiola Sinfonietta. His most recent release is Respighi’s Concerto in modo Misolidio with Sakari Oramo and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
“As a musical interpreter, Olli Mustonen the conductor is very like Olli Mustonen the pianist. Detail after detail is finely articulated, as though etched with the point of a needle... [There] are passages where the clarity and extraordinary finesse yield something I can only describe as visionary” (BBC Music Magazine)
Promoters please note: if you wish to include this biography in a concert programme etc, please contact Hazard Chase to ensure that you receive the most up to date version.
Email: James Leakey
