Folke Gräsbäck

Folke Gräsbeck studied the piano under Tarmo Huovinen at the Turku Conservatory and won I. prize as only 17-years-old in the Maj Lind Competition in 1973, playing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in the final round. He made numerous study visits to London, where he was taught privately by Maria Curcio-Diamand. He has been a senior teacher accompanist at the Sibelius Academy from 1985 to 2017 and became a Master of Music there in 1997. He held his doctoral disputation in 2008 over the thesis The Piano in Sibelius’s Youth Production.

Folke Gräsbeck has performed more than 400 of Sibelius’s c. 600 compositions, and he is one of the main performers of The Sibelius Edition, a collection of 68 CDs released during 2007–2011 by BIS Records. Among his 24 CD discs in this series he plays Sibelius’s complete piano solo works on 10 CDs, which were commented in the US Fanfare magazine: ‘Sibelius’s output for solo piano will likely never again be recorded as comprehensively or as well.’ In addition 52 songs (some of them with Monica Groop), the piano quintet (American Record Guide: The best recording), the piano quartets, piano trios and separate pieces for violin or cello and piano, as well as many original transcriptions by Sibelius for voice(s) and piano.

These 24 CDs were made during an intense period of recordings during 1996–2010. In 2009 he was awarded the Cross of Merit of Finland’s Lion’s Order by the Finnish President Tarja Halonen. In December 2014 he was awarded the prestigious Sibelius Medal. From the start in 2002, Folke Gräsbeck has been the artistic director of the annual festival Sibelius in Korpo.

As a soloist with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra Folke Gräsbeck made his debut as 14 years old, playing the Concert Piece by C. M. von Weber under the baton of Okko Kamu. He has performed more than thirty piano concertos, most frequently the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Shostakovich, in Finland, Russia, Byelorussia (Minsk), Ukraine, Germany, etc.

Performances as a recitalist, chamber player and Lied pianist in many European countries, USA, UAE, Japan, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mexico, China (Shanghai Festival 2017), etc.

President Alexander Stubb awarded Folke Gräsbeck the Pro Finlandia medal on 6 December 2024.