Joonas Ahonen is leaving Klangforum Wien at the same time.
Pianist Joonas Ahonen has been chosen as a professor at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, one of Germany’s largest music universities. The specialty of the professorship is new piano music, and Ahonen will be accompanied by a star pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.
Ahonen takes half of his professorship so that he still has time for concerts as a pianist. At the same time, he leaves the new music group Klangforum Wien in December after first performing Beat Furrer’s piano concerto at a concert by the band at the Konzerthaus in Vienna.
“Even though I had already had a 50 percent contract with Klangforum for several years, coordinating it with other concerts started to get more and more difficult,” Ahonen tells HS.
“Coordinating the half-time teaching position is easier in that I can largely prepare the schedules myself.”
Previously Ahonen has taught at the Graz University of Arts (KUG) for ten years in the new music education program. The professorship has been at Klangforum Wien, and its members have shared the teaching responsibility.
“I’ve had a class of at most three pianists there,” says Ahonen.
He applied to Cologne after receiving a request from a university professor.
“Cologne was interesting, of course, because it was about Aimard’s successor. The student material I inherited from him is of a very high standard”, thanks Ahonen.
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