Heini Kärkkäinen (b. 1966) began studying the piano with Dimitri Hinze in Jyväskylä and in 1984 went on to study with Liisa Pohjola at the Sibelius Academy, where she graduated in 1991. She further studied with Ralf Gothóni and with Jacques Rouvier in Paris. In 1984, she won the Ilmari Hannikainen Piano Competition, and she came second in the Maj Lind Piano Competition two years later. In 1993, she was nominated Young Artist of the Espoo International Piano Week. From 1997-2000, she was the recipient of a three-year State artist grant.

Heini Kärkkäinen has appeared in Scandinavia, Belgium, Germany, Britain, Spain, France and the USA, with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, and at several chamber music festivals in Finland and abroad, including the Charleston Manor Festival run by cellist Robert Cohen in southern England, as well as the Canterbury Festival. She has performed chamber music with Ana Chumachenko, Robert Cohen, Jean-Jacques Kantorow and Isabelle van Keulen.

Her disc of duo works by Szymanowski, Kodály and Schnittke with cellist Jan-Erik Gustafsson (ODE 827-2) won the Record of the Year award of the Finnish Broadcasting Company in 1994.


More information:
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