Roland Pöntinen

Roland Peter Pöntinen (born 4th May 1963, Stockholm, Sweden) is a Swedish pianist and composer.

He is the son of a Finnish-speaking father, a native of the Russian district of Ingria (near Leningrad) who emigrated from the Soviet Union to Sweden in 1945. He studied at the Adolf Fredrik Music School and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm with Gunnar Hallhagen, then with Menahem Pressler, György Sebok and Elisabeth Leonskaya at Indiana University at Bloomington, Indiana, USA.[1][2]

He made his debut in 1981 with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and has since then performed with major orchestras in Europe, USA, Korea, South-America, Australia and New Zealand. He has worked with conductors Myung-Whun Chung, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Neeme Järvi, Paavo Järvi, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Leif Segerstam, Evgeny Svetlanov, Franz Welser-Möst and David Zinman amongst others. He has performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra as well as appearances in London Proms where he has played both the Grieg Piano Concerto and the György Ligeti Piano Concerto.[1][2]

Pöntinen's solo record debut was a recital of Russian piano music on the BIS Records label in 1984. He has since made over 50 records as soloist, accompanist and with orchestra.

Selected list of compositions

The following list is based on information from the composer's web site.[3]

A performance of this piece on February 3, 1998, given by the Philadelphia Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, New York, was reviewed by Bernard Holland in the New York Times:[4]
"A newer piece was Roland Pontinen's Blue Winter for trombone and orchestra. Mr. Pontinen takes an unlikely solo instrument deadly seriously as an agent for rich, flexible lyrical writing. Blue Winter is a kind of elegy in one movement. The trombone part, played here with skill and sincerity by Nitzan Haroz, is made to sing against slow-moving chordal sheets of string sound. The effect is both icy and mournful; the acid harmonies keep sentimentality at bay."
A recording of this piece with Pöntinen as the pianist was reviewed by James R. Oestreich in the New York Times:[5]
"...the prime attraction on that Bis disc [Bis 377; CD] is a sharply defined performance of the Concerto for Piano and Strings by Roland Pontinen and the Stockholm Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Lev Markiz. Here it is Tchaikovsky's 1812 that is savaged, or at least the liturgical tune used in it. Pummeling pianism -- cannonry of sorts -- gives way to transcendence and ultimately to calm."

Notes

  1. ^ a b Official web site: the pianist.
  2. ^ a b Biography of Roland Pöntinen at bach-cantatas.com
  3. ^ Official web site: the composer.
  4. ^ New York Times, February 5, 1998. Accessed 21 Aug 2009. Subscription or registration may be required.
  5. ^ New York Times, August 12, 2005. Accessed 21 Aug 2009. Subscription or registration may be required.

Sources