10.1.2024
Her sound and virtuosity win praise from music critics around the world and her playing has been praised as dazzling, sensitive and brilliant. Born in Iowa in the US, Vähälä’s reputation as a charismatic and exceptionally versatile musician springs from her wide repertoire, which covers concertos and chamber music alike, ranging from baroque to contemporary.
Vähälä has given world premieres of Jaakko Kuusisto’s Violin Concerto, Aulis Sallinen’s Chamber Concerto and Kalevi Aho’s Violin Concerto No 2. She also performed the early version of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra — a piece that has been considered nearly impossible to play.
Recent highlights include performances with Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Houston Symphony, Orchestra National de Lyon, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Singapore Symphony Orchestra, as well as several performances with Finnish orchestras. Vähälä is also a distinguished soloist on Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s tours, visiting Asia, South America and Central Europe alike.
Educational activities play an important role in her commitment to music: in 2009 she was one of the founders of the Violin Academy—a master class based educational project for selected, highly talented young Finnish violinists—and since 2019 she holds a violin professor position at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW). Elina Vähälä’s instrument is Giovanni Battista Guadagnini from 1780.
A romance of three
4.6.
The programme for the opening concert consists of compositions by Clara and Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, inspired by passion and love.
From Osvaldo Golijov to Béla Bartók’s virtuosic Violin Sonata and Georges Enescu’s dazzling Romanian Rhapsody, the concert is a journey through works inspired by the folk music of different cultures. On top of all this, the multi-talented South African Gareth Lubbe amazes listeners as the overtone singing viola soloist.
Violinists Inmo Yang and Elina Vähälä will perform one of Arvo Pärt’s most beloved works, Tabula Rasa, a concerto for two violins, as soloists of the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor Olari Elts will also conduct Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, also known as the Romantic Symphony.
Turning points
10.6.
The concert features compositions by Beethoven, Debussy and Schoenberg that changed the course of musical history.
Devil’s violin
11.6.
The concert will feature compositions that reflect the absurdity of war, as well as Tartini’s virtuosic Devil’s Trill Sonata.
In honorem maris
13.6.
Our homage to the sea, a tradition of the Naantali Music Festival, treads the paths laid out by Jaakko Kuusisto and Franz Schubert. Although Kuusisto did not always compose for the sea, probably not a bar of music would have been composed had he not found inspiration from his sailing trips. The chamber works Miniö […]
