Photo: Anna-Maria Viksten

Anna Kuvaja

A versatile soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player, Finnish pianist Anna Kuvaja is also an active fortepianist and the owner of a small collection of instruments dating from different centuries. She is, furthermore, a sovereign performer of contemporary repertoire, appearing in the ranks of the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Uusinta and other ensembles. Anna has held recitals both at home and abroad, made a number of recordings for the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) and appeared at many exciting festivals: the Mänttä, Crusell, BRQ Vantaa, Time of Music, and Silence, to mention just a few.

In addition to her career as a concert pianist, Anna has taught at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki since 2010 – piano, sight-reading for pianists and notation reading. She has also held a course in performance practices 1750–1850 examining texts from the Age of Enlightenment and Romantic era and discussing light and shade in music.

Anna began her piano studies in Kuhmo in eastern Finland and continued at the Espoo Music Institute under Katarina Nummi-Kuisma at the age of 16. At the Sibelius Academy her teachers were Tuija Hakkila and Liisa Pohjola. She attended a number of masterclasses in piano and chamber music, was an exchange student at the CNSM in Paris with Henri Barda, and gained work experience at Zurich Opera Orchestra Academy from 2005 to 2007. Her critically acclaimed debut recital followed in Helsinki in 2008.

Anna has published three albums on Alba Records. In 2016 BBC Music Magazine awarded her first solo album Fluvial with five stars and described it as “a stunning debut disc… powerful Schubert”. The 2022 and 2024 published chamber music albums, Soiréestücke, with the clarinettist Lauri Sallinen, and Bowen & Clarke Sonatas for viola and piano (2024) with the viola player Hanna Hohti were also well-received. Anna Kuvaja plays also on the Grammy-winner album: Saariaho / Reconnaissance (2023), which was also given the Emma prize in Finland.