PRODROMOS  SYMEONIDIS                             official website            

 
Biography
 

Ever since winning seven prizes at the Concours Olivier Messiaen piano contemporain 2003 in Paris and at the Concours International de piano d'Orléans 2006 Prodromos Symeonidis has been recognized as an important 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), "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. While still 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 musical studies in Munich and at the music conservatories of Cologne and Berlin (Hanns Eisler Conservatory) under Michael Endres (Munich), Karin Merle, Arbo Valdma (Cologne) and Georg Sava (Berlin). Besides piano, he studied instrumental pedagogy and took part in composition seminars with Krzysztof Meyer (Cologne) and Walter Zimmermann (Berlin). Parallel to his studies, he also worked with Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, Claude Helffer (Paris) and Dimitri Bashkirov (Vienna).

His international competition successes have led to solo appearances in numerous concert halls and music festivals in Europe and in Japan, as well as leading to recordings of works by Beethoven, Chopin, Hindemith, Ravel, Messiaen and contemporary composers for the German radio stations SWR2 and Radio Bremen, for France Musique and RCF Orléans, and for the German label telos music records, for which he has made two CDs. Together with the pianist Ya-ou Xie, he founded the ensemble Berlin PianoPercussion in 2008, of which he is artistic director. In just two years from then it has received sponsorships by six notable sponsors, among them the Deutsche Musikrat, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and the Berlin Senate, and has commissioned about twenty new works for pianos and percussion.

Aside from his activities as a performer and ensemble director, Prodromos Symeonidis is an active teacher and composer. He regularly gives lecture concerts, amongst others in the Hanns Eisler Conservatory in Berlin, where he recently performed Messiaen's cycle Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jésus and Maurice Ohana's piano works. In 2008 he was part of the teaching team in the contemporary music centre Acanthes in Metz. During the last years he has composed several solo and chamber music pieces, many of which were successfully performed in Germany (BKA Theater Berlin, Brandenburger Theater Brandenburg, Pro Musica Konzerte Eichstätt) and France (Festival de Musique de Sully, Conservatoire de Musique d'Orléans).

© 2011 Prodromos Symeonidis