Lauded for his “impeccable technique” (The Washington Post) and “elegant musicianship” (The New York Times), pianist Juho Pohjonen is in demand internationally as an orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber performer. An ardent exponent of Scandinavian music, Pohjonen’s growing discography offers a showcase of music by Finnish compatriots such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kaija Saariaho, and Jean Sibelius.
The “fast rising Finnish star” has garnered acclaim as a “delightfully unassuming but bewitching soloist” (The Guardian) in recent engagements with the Los Angeles, BBC, Taiwan and Deutsche Radio Philharmonics; Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras; the San Francisco, Atlanta, New Jersey, and Colorado Symphonies; National Arts Centre Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Danish National Symphony, Finnish Radio Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra of London, and the Mostly Mozart Festival.
Pohjonen is an alumnus of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program and enjoys an ongoing relationship with the organization, performing each season in New York and on tour with other CMS artists. He appears several times on CMS’s 2025-2026 season, including both winter and summer engagements at Alice Tully Hall, as well as a U.S. tour, for which he performs an all-Beethoven program. This season he also returns to the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla Summer Fest and Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach.
Highlights of the 2024-2025 season included recitals and chamber performances for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Washington University in St. Louis, and Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach. Additionally, Pohjonen performed Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor with the Philharmonia Orchestra, and appeared at Wigmore Hall with Stephen Waarts and Jonathan Swensen. Pohjonen has performed in recital at New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Steinway Society in San Jose, in San Francisco, La Jolla, Philadelphia, Detroit, Savannah, and Vancouver, and throughout Europe in London, Antwerp, Hamburg, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, and Warsaw. Following a program at the 92nd Street Y in New York featuring Salonen’s Dichotomie, the New York Times commented, “[Pohjonen] played it like a master.”
Pohjonen has played alongside the Escher and Calidore String Quartets, and collaborated in a program at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. Festival appearances include Lucerne, Finland, Norway, and Germany; in the U.S. he has enjoyed visits to Mostly Mozart, Music @ Menlo, Gilmore, Marlboro, Bridgehampton, and ChamberFest Cleveland. Pohjonen has also collaborated with such esteemed conductors as Marin Alsop, Lionel Bringuier, Marek Janowski, Fabien Gabel, Kirill Karabits, Osmo Vänskä, Pietari Inkinen, Stefan Asbury, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Markus Stenz, and Pinchas Zukerman.
Pohjonen’s growing discography includes the recently released album Visionaries of the Keyboard (Orchid 2024), featuring works by Rameau and Scriabin and showcasing Pohjonen's ability to navigate both baroque elegance and modernist mysticism. Previous recordings include The Dvořák Album, recorded with Jan Vogler and the Moritzburg Festival (Sony Classical 2022); cello works (Inbal Segev) of Chopin, Grieg and Schumann (AVIE 2018); Bach: 6 Sonatas for Violin (Nicolas Dautricourt) and Piano (La Dolce Volta 2018); Music@Menlo Live: Maps and Legends (2010); and Plateaux, works by Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, recorded with Ed Spanjaard and the Danish National Symphony. Pohjonen is a founding member of the Sibelius Piano Trio, who released “a gorgeous debut” (Stereophile) in honor of Finland’s 1917 centennial of independence (Yarlung Records 2016).
Pohjonen earned a master’s degree from Meri Louhos and Hui-Ying Liu-Tawaststjerna at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He was selected by Sir András Schiff as the winner of the 2009 Klavier Festival Ruhr Scholarship. In 2019, Pohjonen launched MyPianist, an AI-based app that provides interactive piano accompaniment. (https://mypianist.app).
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