CelloChat with Anssi Karttunen, live from Paris, France

Topic: "First steps in learning a new composition"

The Finnish cellist ANSSI KARTTUNEN leads a busy career as a soloist and chamber-music player, performing extensively with many of the best orchestras and musicians.

Anssi Karttunen performs all the standard cello works, has discovered many forgotten masterpieces and transcribed numerous pieces for cello, or chamber ensembles. He is a passionate advocate of contemporary music and his collaboration with composers has led him to give over 180 world premieres of works by composers as diverse as Magnus Lindberg, Kaija Saariaho, Pascal Dusapin, Luca Francesconi and Tan Dun.

Karttunen has premiered 30 works for cello and orchestra, among them: Magnus Lindberg’s 2 Cello Concertos, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Concerto “Mania”, Tan Dun’s Cello Concerto “Yi1”, Luca Francesconi’s Cello Concerto “Rest” or Jukka Tiensuu’s “Oire”. Kaija Saariaho’s Concerto “Notes on Light” was a Boston Symphony Orchestra commission for Anssi Karttunen. In October 2018 he gave the premiere of Betsy Jolas’s “Side Roads” with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra..

Karttunen plays in the Zebra Trio with the Austrian violinist Ernst Kovacic and Canadian viola player Steven Dann. He appears in recitals with Magnus Lindberg and Nicolas Hodges. With the multi-instrumentalist John Paul Jones Karttunen has two groups: Sons of Chipotle and Tres Coyotes.

He plays with many of the best orchestras of the world and in recitals and chamber music at major festivals in Europe: Edinburgh, Salzburg, Lockenhaus, Spoleto, Berlin, Venice, Montpellier, Strasbourg, Helsinki etc..

The CD´s of Anssi Karttunen range from Bach on a Violoncello Piccolo, Beethoven on a classical cello and 20th-Century works for solo cello to concertos with London Sinfonietta, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Philharmonia Orchestra with Esa-Pekka Salonen. Sony Classical issued CDs of the Concertos of Lindberg, Saariaho and Salonen. Deutsche Grammophon issued a DVD of Tan Dun’s The Map for cello, video and Orchestra and a CD of Henri Dutilleux’s Cello Concerto (Grammophon Award 2013). Recent CDs include also Brahms’s Chamber Music and a solo recital on Toccata Classics, Saariaho Trios and Lindberg Cello music on Ondine, Tangos on Albany Records and Colin Matthews’s Cello Concerto 2 for NMC.

Between 1994 and 1998 he was the artistic director of the Avanti!-Chamber Orchestra. He was the artistic director of the 1995 Helsinki Biennale and the Suvisoitto-festival in Porvoo, Finland from 1994 to 1997. From 1999 to 2005 Anssi Karttunen was the principal cellist of the London Sinfonietta. He was the artistic director of the Musica nova Helsinki festival in 2015.

Anssi Karttunen also performs as a conductor. He has conducted Lindberg’s Kraft with the Flanders Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic cello ensemble, the Gaida Ensemble in Vilnius, NJO String Orchestra etc.

He is a founding member of Petals, a non-profit organisation for the production and sale of CDs and scores on the Internet. His transcriptions include Brahms’s Piano Quintet for String Quintet and Händel-Variations op. 24 for String Trio, Schumann’s Cello Concerto for Cello and String Orchestra and Album for the Young for String Trio many of them available through www.petals.org.

His teachers included Erkki Rautio, William Pleeth, Jacqueline du Pré and Tibor de Machula. He teaches at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris.

Karttunen plays a cello by Francesco Ruggeri, Cremona circa 1670.