Juho Pohjonen
One of the brightest young talents to emerge from Finland, Juho Pohjonen has attracted
great attention as one of the most intriguing and talented pianists today. In 2009, Mr.
Pohjonen was selected by András Schiff as winner of the Klavier-Festival Ruhr Scholarship.
In addition, he has won numerous prizes in both Finnish and international competitions,
including first prize at the 2004 Nordic Piano Competition in Nyborg, first prize at the
2000 International Young Artists Concerto Competition in Stockholm, the Prokofiev Prize at
the 2003 Dublin International Piano Competition, and a prize at the 2002 Helsinki
International Maj Lind Piano Competition.
Mr. Pohjonen has given recitals at Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln
Center in New York, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, as well as performances in
Dresden, Hamburg, Helsinki, San Francisco, Vancouver, Alicante, Warsaw, and Hong Kong. He
has also given recitals at the Lucerne, Gilmore, Savonlinna, Bergen, and
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern festivals. Mr. Pohjonen has performed with the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Symphony
Orchestra, Malmö Symfoniorkester, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony
Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, National Arts Centre
Orchestra, Scottish Chamber and Philharmonia orchestras, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra,
Zagrebačke filharmonije, and Lahti Symphony Orchestra.
Highlights of the 2011-2012 season include Mr. Pohjonen's debut at the Mostly Mozart
Festival, where he performs a solo recital, as well as Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 with
Jonathan Nott and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. Mr. Pohjonen plays Mozart's Piano
Concerto No. 21 with the National Arts Centre Orchestra led by Thomas Søndergård, and
Schubert's "Trout" Quintet with the San Francisco Symphony. As part of the Chamber Music
Society of Lincoln Center's CMS Two residency program, Mr. Pohjonen performs works by
Debussy, Fauré, Schumann, and Saint-Säens on concerts in New York, Boston, and Chicago.
This season's European engagements include his debut at the Louvre Museum in Paris with
flutist Sooyun Kim, a recital at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and concerts with the Turku
Philharmonic Orchestra in Finland.
Mr. Pohjonen's debut recording Plateaux features two works by Scandinavian
composer Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen: a piano concerto Plateaux pour piano et
orchestre with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and a solo piano piece For
Piano. His sensational opening recital at the 2010 Music@Menlo festival led to a
recording for the Music@Menlo LIVE series entitled Maps and Legends: Disc
8.
Mr. Pohjonen's began his music studies in 1989 at the Junior Academy of the Sibelius
Academy in Helsinki. He studied with Meri Louhos and Hui-Ying Liu at the Sibelius Academy,
where he completed his master's degree in 2008. Mr. Pohjonen has also participated in
several master classes with András Schiff, Leon Fleisher, Jacob Lateiner, and Barry
Douglas.