Works for violin and piano

His first teacher at the East Helsinki Music Institue was Gèza Szilvay. In 1983, Pekka Kuusisto enrolled at the Sibelius Academy, where from 1985, he studied with Professor Tuomas Haapanen. From 1992-96, he studied in Bloomington (USA) at the Indiana University School of Music with professors Miriam Fried and Paul Biss.

In November 1995, Pekka Kuusisto became the first Finnish violinist to win the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki and was additionally awarded the special prize for the best performance of the Sibelius Concerto. Past competition successes have also included third prize at the Carl Nielsen Competition in Denmark in 1992, and first prize at the national Kuopio Violin Competition in Finland in 1995.

Pekka Kuusisto has performed with numerous Finnish orchestras, including the Finnish Radio Symphony and the Helsinki Philharmonic, with whom he toured to Japan in 1996. Since 1996 he has also performed with the Royal Philharmonic and Yuri Temirkanov on tour in Italy, BBC Symphony with Paavo Berglund, the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Leif Segerstam at the Hollywood Bowl, and the Deutsches Symphonie -Orchester Berlin with Vladimir Ashkenazy. He has performed with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, with Osmo Vänskä in London, and again with Martyn Brabbins at the St. Magnus Festival, he has also appeared with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Paavo Berglund at the Bremen Festival and with the Czech Philharmonic and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

With his regular duo partner Raija Kerppo, he has given debut recitals in Bergen, London (Wigmore Hall), Paris (Chatelet), Ravinia, Bremen and Sydney, as well as throughout Finland, he has performed with pianist Olli Mustonen at the Lincoln Center in New York, and with cellist Steven Isserlis in chamber concerts at the City of London Festival. Kuusisto is also co-Artistic Director of the Chamber Music by lake Tuusula Festival in Finland together with his brother Jaakko Kuusisto.

Pekka Kuusisto's highly acclaimed first CD for the Ondine label was released in February 1996: Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Helsinki Philharmonic conducted by Leif Segerstam. His recital CD - 'Strings Attached' - was released in October 1997. Kuusisto records for Ondine label exclusively.

Pekka Kuusisto plays a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin of 1752 kindly loaned by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Heini Kärkkäinen (b. 1966) began studying the piano with Dimitri Hinze in Jyväskylä and in 1984 went on to study with Liisa Pohjola at the Sibelius Academy, where she completed her Master of Music degree in 1991. She has studied further with Ralf Gothóni and with Jacques Rouvier in Paris.

Heini Kärkkäinen won the Ilmari Hannikainen Piano Competition in 1984 and came second in the Maj Lind Piano Competition two years later. In 1993, she was nominated Young Artist of the Espoo International Piano Week.

Heini Kärkkäinen has appeared in Scandinavia, Belgium, Germany, Britain, Spain, France and the USA, with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tapiola Sinfonietta, Sinfonia Lahti and the Avanti! chamber orchestra, and at several chamber music festivals in Finland and abroad. She has performed chamber music with Ana Chumachenko, Robert Cohen and Jean-Jacques Kantorow. For the summers of 2002, 2003 and 2004, she has been invited to the Charleston Manor Festival run by cellist Robert Cohen in southern England, in autumn 2002, she appeared at the Canterbury Festival with Isabelle van Keulen and Robert Cohen.

Her disc of duo works by Szymanowski, Kodály and Schnittke with cellist Jan-Erik Gustafsson (ODE 827-2) won the Record of the Year award of the Finnish Broadcasting Company in 1994. She was the recipient of a three-year State artist grant from 1997 to 2000.