She has a great passion for working with students at the Academy of Music in Malmö where she has created a unique environment for performance research.
She is a firm believer in the development of a modern classical musician in the 21st century concerned with a wider understanding of the music and performance culture that is classical music. It is essential to add for example a deepened intellectual or political aspect to a performance, or when programming music.
“I think there are audible traces of the knowledge that I have acquired during my studies and that it is detectable in the way I perform. My CD Notes from Endenich is a concrete example of this as it is not only a CD release but also a part of my PhD thesis. My aim is to communicate more than just a performance. I want to leave my audience filled with associations to other fields of knowledge such as psychology, and thereby expand my artistic expression and their experience.” As a researcher, she has explored the emotional regulation and practice of performing pianists as well as the effect of the culture and traditions of western classical music on musicians. The research has been part of her concert performances (recital in Stockholm, 2018) her articles have been published in peer-reviewed international journals.
Brahms, Beethoven, and Rachmaninov are very dear to her but her repertoire is wide.
Recently in 2021, she played Clara Schumann’s brilliant Piano concerto with Västerås Sinfonietta in collaboration with conductor Simon Crawford-Phillips.
In 2020 she also recorded Robert Schumann’s piano sonata op. 11 and contemporary composer Staffan Storm’s Unbekanntes Blatt aus Endenicher Zeit, 2018.
”Her playing is big-boned, grandly sculptured, with taut rhythmic control and a rich sound.” Writes Tim Parry in Gramophone
Martin Nyström writes in 2018 in Dagens Nyheter: "With Franciska Skoogh as a soloist, we were brought right into a flow that is the most humane way tears up what is hidden and exposes the locked-up emotions and hard-wired pain on its unstoppable urge to move ahead. Skoogh and the orchestra made this music noisy, trickle and sing in a remarkable way. And leading to the incredible progression of chords, in the last few bars that this evening truly sounded like the world’s most beautiful melody. The fact that the audience cried openly was not surprising. The triumph afterward was deafening."
Francisca Skoogh made her debut at the age of 13 with the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra and has since established herself as one of Sweden's foremost concert pianists. She was the recipient of the prestigious ”Premier Prix” in both chamber music and piano at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris and the Soloist Diploma at The Royal Danish Music Conservatoire. Francisca has been awarded the soloist prize in Stockholm as well as second prize at the Michelangeli Competition in Italy.
Francisca’s recordings have received raving reviews and can be found on Spotify and Youtube.
Francisca Skoogh is a frequent guest at both national and international music festivals and as a soloist, she appears regularly with several of the Swedish orchestras and she has cooperated with conductors such as Heinz Wallberg, Ruth Reinhardt, Susanna Mälkki, Gianandrea Noseda, Michail Jurowski, and Pinchas Steinberg. During recent years she has had close cooperation with conductor Leif Segerstam with concertos by Brahms, Beethoven and Rachmaninov. Francisca has performed together with several of Sweden’s foremost musicians and has premiered various works by contemporary composers. She has ongoing collaborations with composer Staffan Storm and Royal Court Singer Anna Larsson, alto, among others.
In 2018 she was elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
