Pietari Inkinen

Biography

Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen is one of the leading conductors of his generation. He has made a name for himself worldwide through his big-picture thinking and outstanding technique, and has conducted prestigious orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Sydney Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra. In June 2024, he made his spectacular debut with the Danish National Orchestra, stepping in at very short notice to conduct Mahler's Third Symphony. In the same year, he made his debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin with Tannhäuser , which critics said was "one of the strongest Wagner performances" in that house.

The music of Richard Wagner occupies a central place in Pietari Inkinen's work. In 2023 he conducted the new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival (directed by Valentin Schwarz). In summer 2021 he conducted a special production of Die Walküre by Hermann Nitsch at the Grüner Hügel. His acclaimed performances of the Ring Cycle with Opera Australia in 2013 and 2016 earned Inkinen two awards: Australia's 2014 Helpmann Award for Best Musical Direction and a 2016 Green Room Award for Best Opera Conductor. He also received the Franco Abbiati Prize from the Italian National Association of Music Critics for his 2014 performance of Rheingold at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo.

Further opera productions have taken him to the Finnish National Opera, the Théâtre de la Monnaie, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the Bavarian State Opera and the Semperoper Dresden, where he conducted a highly successful new production of Eugene Onegin.

Pietari Inkinen is chief conductor of the German Radio Philharmonic Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern and music director of the KBS Symphony Orchestra in Seoul. He previously held chief positions with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Prague Symphony Orchestra and the Ludwigsburg Festival Orchestra. During his time as music director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, he recorded all of the Sibelius symphonies for Naxos. He made another live recording of the Sibelius cycle with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra in Suntory Hall. With the German Radio Philharmonic, he is working on a complete recording of all of the symphonies by Dvořák and Prokofiev (SWRmusic/Naxos). The film portrait “A baton and a passport - Pietari Inkinen Conductor” (directed by Sven Rech) was released in October 2023.

Pietari Inkinen is successful not only as a conductor, but also as a violinist. He studied with Zakhar Bron at the Cologne Music Academy before continuing his training as a conductor at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.