Swedish pianist Martin Sturfält enjoys a busy international career as a concerto soloist and recitalist, and is also a passionate chamber musician. While his repertoire includes a large number of standard works from the baroque, classical and romantic periods, Martin is also keen to promote newer music and lesser known works in his concert programmes. In December 2009 Sweden’s main classical music magazine Opus placed Martin as number five in their New Year’s list of the most significant Swedish musicians.
Born near Katrineholm in Sweden in 1979, Martin started to play the piano around the age of four. He studied at the Stockholm Royal College of Music and at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. His principal teachers were Esther Bodin-Karpe and Stefan Bojsten in Stockholm, and Paul Roberts and Ronan O’Hora in London.
Martin began giving regular concerts at the age of 11, and has since performed extensively throughout Scandinavia, UK and the rest of Europe, as well as in Asia and the USA. Highlights in recent years have included solo and chamber music recitals at all major venues in Stockholm and the rest of Sweden as well as at London’s Purcell Room, Barbican Hall, Royal Festival Hall and Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Martin is regularly invited as a soloist with orchestras and has appeared with among others the Hallé Orchestra and most Swedish orchestras such as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the Swedish Radio Symphony, collaborating with conductors such as Sir Mark Elder, Andrew Manze and Alexander Vedernikov. His performances have been broadcast throughout Europe and the USA and he has made frequent television appearances. His critically praised début CD of the Wilhelm Stenhammar piano works was released by Hyperion Records in the autumn of 2008.
Martin has had considerable success in piano competitions, winning first prize in both the 1999 Swedish and the 2002 UK Yamaha competitions as well as the 2002 Malmö Nordic ‘Blüthner’ Piano Competition, the 2004 John Ogdon Prize, and the 2005 Terence Judd Award.
