JOEY CALDERAZZO

PETRONEL MALAN

ALEXANDER PALEY

CLEMENS UNTERREINER

OVIDIO DE FERRARI

MIKHAIL PLETNEV

 

Swedish pianist Martin Sturfält enjoys a busy international career as a concerto soloist and recitalist, and is also a passionate chamber musician. While his repertoire includes a large number of standard works from the baroque, classical and romantic periods, Martin is also keen to promote newer music and lesser known works in his concert programmes. In December 2009 Sweden’s main classical music magazine Opus placed Martin as number five in their New Year’s list of the most significant Swedish musicians.

Born near Katrineholm in Sweden in 1979, Martin started to play the piano around the age of four. He studied at the Stockholm Royal College of Music and at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. His principal teachers were Esther Bodin-Karpe and Stefan Bojsten in Stockholm, and Paul Roberts and Ronan O’Hora in London.

Martin began giving regular concerts at the age of 11, and has since performed extensively throughout Scandinavia, UK and the rest of Europe, as well as in Asia and the USA. Highlights in recent years have included solo and chamber music recitals at all major venues in Stockholm and the rest of Sweden as well as at London’s Purcell Room, Barbican Hall, Royal Festival Hall and Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Martin is regularly invited as a soloist with orchestras and has appeared with among others the Hallé Orchestra and most Swedish orchestras such as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the Swedish Radio Symphony, collaborating with conductors such as Sir Mark Elder, Andrew Manze and Alexander Vedernikov. His performances have been broadcast throughout Europe and the USA and he has made frequent television appearances. His critically praised début CD of the Wilhelm Stenhammar piano works was released by Hyperion Records in the autumn of 2008.

Martin has had considerable success in piano competitions, winning first prize in both the 1999 Swedish and the 2002 UK Yamaha competitions as well as the 2002 Malmö Nordic ‘Blüthner’ Piano Competition, the 2004 John Ogdon Prize, and the 2005 Terence Judd Award.

Historical Composers & Artists

"After my coffee and cigar we went to one of the recording rooms where they had a Blüthner piano Well, this Blüthner had the most beautiful singing tone I had ever found. I became quite enthusiastic and decided to play my beloved Barcarolle of Chopin. The piano inspired me. I don’t think I ever played better in my life.“

Arthur Rubinstein 

„My Many Years“ (page 281)

 

„In das Exil nach Amerika begleiteten mich nur zwei Wesen von Bedeutung: meine Frau Natalja und mein kostbarer Blüthner.“

“There are only two important things which I took with me on my way to America. My wife Natalia and my precious Blüthner.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff

 

 “Almost in the middle of the room, the black Blüthner grand stood, free of music, book or photographs. Debussy was proud of his grand piano, and before I played he showed me a new device invented by Blüthner: an extra string set on top of the others. Although not touched by the hammers, it caught the overtones, thus increasing the vibrations and enriching the sonority. This was a piano he had rented during a stay in Bournemouth, and liked so well that he had bought it and had it shipped to Paris.” “He played a number of passages and the tone he extracted from the Blüthner was the loveliest, the most elusive and ethereal I have ever heard”. 

letter from Maurice Dumesnil, friend

Claude Debussy

Debussy's Blüthner at the Musée Labenche