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Biography
Ever
since
winning seven prizes at the Concours Olivier
Messiaen piano contemporain 2003 in Paris and
the Concours International de piano d'Orléans 2006,
Prodromos
Symeonidis
has gained worldwide recognition as an outstanding
interpreter of contemporary music and classical music in
general. His playing has elicited enthusiasm and praise
from some of the world's top musicians and critics... "un
grand
artiste",
"un
roi
du piano"
(Yvonne Loriod Messiaen), "I
love very much his sound"
(Claude Helffer), "an
outstanding
technique and a superb musical sensitivity"
(Kent Nagano), "superb
pianist"
(Fanfare), "geistig wie manuell eindringliches
Spiel",
"außerordentlich
anschlagsvariabel"
(Frankfurter
Allgemeine
Zeitung)
"d'une
maîtrise
époustouflante"
(ConcertoNet).
Prodromos
Symeonidis
was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1972. Apart from
music, composition and the piano, which were his
constant companions from early childhood, he also had a
great fondness for mathematics and astronomy, which were
later on combined with a love for the cinema. As a
youth, he won many prizes at national and international
contests for mathematics, including a bronze medal at
the 30th International Mathematical Olympiad in 1989. In
1990, he moved to Germany, where he pursued and
completed his piano studies in Munich and at
the Musikhochschulen of Cologne and Berlin under
Michael Endres, Karin Merle, Arbo Valdma and Georg Sava.
Besides soloistic piano, he studied instrumental
pedagogy and participated in composition seminars
under Krzysztof Meyer and Walter Zimmermann. In addition
to his academic studies, he also worked in Paris and
Vienna with Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen,
Claude
Helffer
and
Dimitri Bashkirov.
His
international
piano competition successes have led to concerts in many
famous halls throughout
the
world,
like the Konzerthaus
and Philharmonie in Berlin, Philharmonie Essen, Sendesaal
Bremen, Tonhalle
Düsseldorf, Opéra National and Opéra Comique de Paris,
Arsenal de Metz, Seoul Arts Center and Shanghai Oriental
Arts Center.
He
has
recorded works by Beethoven, Hindemith, Ravel,
Prokofiev, Messiaen and many contemporary composers for
the German radios SWR, BR and Radio Bremen and for
France Musique.
He has further recorded seven CDs for the german label
Telos Music, which were highly praised by the
international press like FAZ, Fanfare, Pizzicato, Piano
News, ResMusica and ConcertoNet.
Aside
from
his activities as an interpreter, Prodromos Symeonidis
is an ensemble director, composer and teacher. In 2008
he founded together
with
pianist and conductor Ya-ou Xie
the internationally active ensemble Berlin
PianoPercussion, of which he is since then the artistic
director. Up to now the
ensemble
has received sponsorships by many notable sponsors,
among them the Deutscher
Musikrat, the Ernst
von
Siemens Music Foundation, the City of Berlin and the DAAD.
It has commissioned and premiered over fifty new works for
pianos and percussion by renowned composers like Hugues
Dufourt, Tristan Murail and Georg Katzer.
Prodromos
Symeonidis
has
composed
himself
several solo and chamber music pieces which have been
successfully performed in Europe. He
has
been invited to give masterclasses, workshops or
lectures in numerous institutions and Universities like
the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin and the
Hochschule für Musik Hannover (Germany), the
Contemporary Music Centre “Acanthes” in Metz and the
École Normale de Musique de Paris (France), the
Conservatoire Royal de Liège (Belgium), the Universities
of Virginia and Miami (USA), the Soongsil
University in Seoul (Korea) and the Music Conservatories
of Xi'an, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Guiyang (China). Since
2019 he has a teaching position at the Academy of Music
Berlin.
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©
2020 Prodromos Symeonidis
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Photo:
Erika Matsunami

with
Yvonne Loriod Messiaen
with the
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
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