Photo: Clara Evens

Otto Antikainen (violin) is both a soloist and a chamber musician. He has, among others, appeared as a soloist with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, Kuopio Symphony Orchestra and Joensuu City Orchestra.

He has performed at many festivals such as Kuhmo Chamber Music, Tampere Chamber Music, Gstaad New Year Music Festival and the Hauho Music Festival, as a chamber musician. Antikainen has performed with for example Ilya Gringolts, Nicholas Collon, Torleif Thedéen, Marko Ylönen and Réka Szilvay.

Winner of the third prize in the Kuopio Violin Competition in 2020, Antikainen had previously won the Juhani Heinonen Violin Competition in 2016 and been a semi-finalist and recipient of the special prize for the best chamber music performance in the Menuhin Violin Competition in Geneva in 2018.

Antikainen has studied at the Sibelius Academy with Réka Szilvay, in Berlin with Antje Weithaas and at the Violin Academy with Janne Malmivaara, Elina Vähälä and Ilja Grubert. Important teachers in masterclasses have been Ivry Gitlis, Menahem Pressler, Ana Chumachenco, Miriam Fried, Mihaela Martin, Gerhard Schulz and Tuomas Haapanen.

Otto Antikainen plays a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin from 1760 on loan from the Finnish Cultural Foundation.