Fanny Söderström

Depth, sincerity, communion: these are the three basic elements that have sustained Fanny Söderström ever since, at the age of three, she managed to entice the first meaningful note from her piano. From that moment onwards, the stave became her ABC, the piano keys her story book and great compositions a tool for conveying thoughts and moving even thousands of people at a time – without a word being said.

Since her first memories coincided with her first notes, Fanny never really chose to play the piano; she chose to live and breathe it. She has, from a very early age, had a passion for learning new pieces. This would later earn her a reputation for having an outstandingly quick ability to sight-read and absorb music. Indeed, she has always felt drawn to modern and very new works.

Fanny has made her mark far and wide, from her native Finland to the Far East and North America. She has given solo recitals in, for example, Detmold, Stockholm and Berlin, and played chamber music in Montreal and many Chinese cities. Also greatly inspired by playing with others, she has been active in founding new musical consorts. These have included a new symphony orchestra (Oma Orkesteri) in 2011 and a chamber music festival (Toivakka) with Aapo Järvinen in 2019. She regularly appears in the Trio Est with Abel Puustinen (violin) and Anna Westerlund (cello). Since autumn 2022, Fanny has been a chamber pianist at the Sibelius Academy.

Beginning her studies at the East Helsinki Music Institute, Fanny graduated from the Sibelius Academy as a pupil of Tuija Hakkila and Antti Hotti. In summer 2022, she graduated from the class of Professor Björn Lehmann at the Berlin University of the Arts. She won the second prize in the Tampere Piano Competition in 2017 and the Helsinki Lied Competition in 2018. Her numerous festival appearances have included PianoEspoo, Our Festival, the Mänttä and Helsinki Festivals, Kamarikesä and Viitasaari Time of Music, and she has been the soloist with the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra, Saimaa Sinfonietta, Tampere Philharmonic and Jyväskylä Sinfonia. At her debut appearance with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in spring 2022 she was the soloist in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with cellist Senja Rummukainen and violinist Otto Antikainen.