Pekka Kuusisto is a Finnish violinist,
composer, conductor, and teacher born (in Espoo, Finland – a small city ten
miles west of Helsinki) on October 7, 1976.
He is known for presenting unusual programs of music which are quite
eclectic while maintaining their seriousness.
He has been known to sing at his recitals. He also sometimes uses an undulating bow
stroke which produces a subtly different sound.
As strange as it might sound, Kuusisto was the first (and – up to the
present time - the only) Finn to win, in 1995, the Sibelius Violin
Competition. He was 19 years old at the
time. Here is a YouTube video of his
performance at the competition. Kuusisto
began his studies at age 3. His first
teacher was Geza Szilvay at the East Helsinki Music Institute. (Szilvay is well known for teaching young
children.) Four years later Kuusisto
enrolled at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.
One of his teachers there was Tuomas Haapanen. Nine years later, he studied for four years
at Indiana University with Miriam Fried and Paul Biss (husband of Miriam Fried.) He finished his studies there in 1996. He was 20 years old. A very curious anomaly about Kuusisto’s
career is that his discography is rather slim given his extreme virtuosity as a
musician. (That is very striking and
reminds me of Norwegian violinist Mari Samuelsen’s discography which is also rather slender.) Besides solo concertizing, Kuusisto regularly
participates in music festivals around the world and often performs with
ensembles focused on contemporary music.
Here is a video of a concert with Kuusisto conducting the Australian
Chamber Orchestra in a performance of modern music, including electronics – one
of the pieces shows the strings using what look like practice mutes, not
regular mutes. As far as I know,
Kuusisto’s violin is still a 1752 G.B. Guadagnini.
