MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Brahms: Sonata in F Minor / 16 Waltzes

"With teachers who include Mitsuko Uchida, Murray Perahia and Charles Rosen, this 25-year-old Finn has been keeping some pretty impressive company. He took the first prize at Leeds Piano Competition in 2003 where he was also voted the audience favourite. His Naxos recital of song transcriptions last year part of another piano prize - earned him his first Editor's Choice and it's good to be welcoming him back so soon and in such music."
- Editor's Choice Gramophone Magazine (August 2004)

"... naturally pianistic and elegant... real imagination and eloquence... a dream of wonderfully sustained intensity and dynamic murmur... sonorous and boldly alive."
- International Piano Quarterly

Antti Siirala, Winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition 2003 plays on this expected disc Johannes Brahms's Sonata in F Minor, op. 5 No. 3 and 16 Waltzes, op. 39.

By the age of 24 Antti Siirala has won four major International piano competitions: the Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna 1997, the London International Piano Competition in 2000, the Dublin Competion in 2003 and Leeds International Piano Competition in 2003. At the Leeds International Piano Competition Siirala was also voted the audience favourite. Antti Siirala has done his pianodiploma at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.

Antti Siirala is equally at home with contemporary music as well as with romantic repertoire: in Vienna in 1997 he was also awarded the prize for best performance of a late sonata of Beethoven.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was only 20 years old when he composed his Piano Sonata in F Minor. The Sonata in F minor was the third of Brahms's piano sonatas. It was clearly a step forward from its predecessors, although the interval between them was not long. It is the work of an accomplished master despite the young age of the composer. The Sonata on F Minor was given its public premiere by Clara Schumann on tour in Magdeburg in December 1854. The collection of Sixteen Waltzes op. 39 was completed in 1865 and they represent the lighter and more elegant side of Brahms's keyboard writing. These waltzes did much to promote Brahms's reputation in its day and they still belong among the favourites of audience.