Ulf Wallin & Roland Pöntinen
Biography Ulf Wallin & Roland Pöntinen
Ulf Wallin
The Swedish violinist Ulf Wallin studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm with Prof. Sven Karpe and at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna with Wolfgang Schneiderhan.
Ulf Wallin devotes himself to solo and chamber music with equal passion. Concert tours have taken him to Asia, Europe and the United States. He has worked with such eminent conductors as Jesús Lopéz Cobos, Manfred Honeck, Paavo Järvi, Andrew Manze, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Walter Weller and Franz Welser-Möst.
Ulf Wallin has appeared at numerous major festivals including the Lucerne and Berlin music festivals, the Schleswig-Holstein fFestival, the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg, Musiktage Mondsee, Festival Pablo Casals de Prades and Marlboro Music Festival. He has performed in the world’s leading venues, including the Berlin Philharmonie, La Scala di Milano, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées Paris, London’s Wigmore Hall and the Musikverein in Vienna.
Ulf Wallin’s dedication to contemporary music is highlighted by his close contacts with several eminent composers, among them Anders Eliasson, Alfred Schnittke and Rodion Shchedrin.
He has made numerous radio, and television appearances and more than 45 CD recordings, many of them for BIS, have gained much acclaim and attention from the international media.
Ulf Wallin has been professor of violin at Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler since 1996. He has served on juries for major international competitions including the ARD Competition in Munich and the Fritz Kreisler Violin Competition in Vienna.
In 2013 he was awarded the Robert-Schumann-Preis der Stadt Zwickau and in 2014 he was elected into the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
Ulf Wallin plays a violin by the Venetian master Domenico Montagnana from 1746.
Roland Pöntinen
Thanks to an insatiable musical appetite and a stupendous technique he has acquired a vast repertoire ranging from Bach to Ligeti. The emphasis is on the ”golden era” in piano literature from the 19th century – through the first half of the 20th century with composers such as Debussy, Busoni, Szymanowski and Rachmaninov. Often immersed in large scale projects Pöntinen has recently performed the complete cycles of Beethoven Sonatas and Années de pèlerinage by Liszt.
Many composers, among them Sven-Erik Bäck, Veli-Matti Puumala, Anders Eliasson and Anders Hillborg, have dedicated works to him and in 2007 he gave the world premiere of Shchedrin’s Romantic Duets together with the composer at the Verbier Festival. Always in great demand as a chamber player Pöntinen has worked with artists of distinction like Barbara Hendricks, Janine Jansen, Nobuko Imai, Peter Mattei, Martin Fröst, Zvi Zeitlin, Ulf Wallin, Torleif Thedéen, Håkan Hardenberger, Arve Tellefsen, Christian Lindberg and Nicolai Gedda.
Pöntinen has given recitals in New York (The Frick Collection), London (Wigmore Hall), Bogotá, Istanbul, Stockholm and, most recently, at the Verbier Festival last summer. Recent appearances with orchestras include Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody with Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Shostakovich’s First Concerto with Orchestre de La Suisse Romande, the Schumann Concerto with Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and in January 2017 Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphony with Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Sakari Oramo.
During last two seasons he has toured Japan, Taiwan, England, Scandinavia and Holland. In June 2017 Pöntinen recorded Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety with the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Christian Lindberg, adding to an extensive discography of nearly 100 recordings for a.o. BIS, c p o, Arte Nova, EMI, Philips and his own label Haddock.
Roland Pöntinen is also active as a composer and his Blue Winter was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch at Carnegie Hall in 1998. His latest work, L’éléphant rose for trumpet and piano, written for Håkan Hardenberger, was premiered at Wigmore Hall in 2016. He has also arranged music by Legrand, Joni Mitchell and Weill for Hardenberger and Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Pöntinen is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and in 2002 he received the Litteris et Artibus – a royal medal for recognition of eminent skills in the artistic field.
