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Artist Page: Petteri Iivonen

Thanks to the generosity of our friend and benefactor Ann Moore Mulally, Yarlung Records brings you the long anticipated second recording featuring Finnish violinist Petteri Iivonen and Canadian master pianist Kevin Fitz-Gerald. The album includes Bach’s G Minor sonata for solo violin, the Cesar Franck sonata for violin and piano in A Major, Miniature VIII, a gem for solo violin by David S. Lefkowitz, and the titanic Brahms Sonata No. 3 in D Minor for violin and piano. Revel in this journey.

Petteri was born in 1987, and began to study the violin at the Helsinki Conservatory when he was four years old.  Petteri also studied the piano as a student and remains an accomplished pianist. Since 1997, Petteri’s principal teachers have been Tuomas Haapanen and Hagai Shaham.  Iivonen has performed with Paul Neubauer and David Grossman of the New York Philharmonic, and raised money for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a special Choral room benefit at Walt Disney Concert Hall.  Petteri was invited to perform with pianist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough  to open The Broad Stage in Santa Monica in 2008. Iivonen performed the Tchaikovsky violin concerto under the baton of Zubin Mehta in 2010, and toured South America with Mehta the following year.

While much of Petteri’s playing is exceptionally beautiful, he never tries to make the sound “pretty,” I have heard very few violinist’s with Petteri’s ability to control color and timbre, and even fewer who use this ability for such musical and appropriate ends. Petteri plays a Ferdinandus Gagliano violin, built in 1767, kindly loaned to him by OKO Bank Art Foundation. Kevin plays New York Steinway serial number 567908.

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