Prodromos Symeonidis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1972. Apart from music, composition and the piano, which were his constant companions from early childhood, he also had a great fondness for mathematics and astronomy, which were later on combined with a love for the cinema. As a youth, he won many prizes at national and international contests for mathematics, including a bronze medal at the 30th International Mathematical Olympiad in 1989. In 1990, he moved to Germany, where he pursued and completed his piano studies in Munich and at the Musikhochschulen of Cologne and Berlin under Michael Endres, Karin Merle, Arbo Valdma and Georg Sava. Besides soloistic piano, he studied instrumental pedagogy and participated in composition seminars under Krzysztof Meyer and Walter Zimmermann. In addition to his academic studies, he also worked in Paris and Vienna with Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, Claude Helffer and Dimitri Bashkirov.
His international piano competition successes have led to concerts in many famous halls throughout the world, like the Konzerthaus and Philharmonie in Berlin, Philharmonie Essen, Sendesaal Bremen, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Opéra National and Opéra Comique de Paris, Arsenal de Metz, Seoul Arts Center and Oriental Arts Center and He Luting Hall in Shanghai.
He has recorded works by Beethoven, Hindemith, Ravel, Messiaen and many contemporary composers for the German radios SWR2, Radio Bremen, and the French France Musique, RCF Orléans. He has further recorded six CDs for the German label Telos Music, which were highly praised by the international press like FAZ, Fanfare, Pizzicato, Piano News, ResMusica and ConcertoNet.
Aside from his activities as an interpreter, Prodromos Symeonidis is an ensemble director, composer and teacher. In 2008 he founded together with pianist and conductor Ya-ou Xie the internationally active ensemble Berlin PianoPercussion, of which he is since then the artistic director. Up to now the ensemble has received sponsorships by many notable sponsors, among them the Deutscher Musikrat, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the City of Berlin and the DAAD. It has commissioned and premiered over forty new works for pianos and percussion by renowned composers like Hugues Dufourt, Tristan Murail and Georg Katzer.
Prodromos Symeonidis has composed several solo and chamber music pieces which have been successfully performed in Europe. He has been invited to give masterclasses, workshops or lectures in numerous institutions and Universities like the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin and the Hochschule für Musik Hannover (Germany), the Contemporary Music Centre “Acanthes” in Metz and the École Normale de Musique de Paris (France), the Conservatoire Royal de Liège (Belgium), the Universities of Virginia and Miami (USA), the Soongsil University in Seoul (Korea) and the Music Conservatories of Xi'an and Guiyang (China).
As of February 2020