Concerts of the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Helsinki and abroad
9.5.2018
Sounds of Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival can be heard in Helsinki on 31 May. Concerts outside Finland will be held in Hong Kong on 15 May, in Mantova, Italy, on 2 June, and in St. Petersburg on 5 June. Vladimir Mendelssohn, the artistic director or the festival, has planned the concert programmes.
The spring season concerts of the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival start off with two concerts in Hong Kong on 15 May. These concerts, titled Dances and Fairytales, will be held in one of the most beautiful parks of the metropolis, the Nan Lian Garden. The programmes include works by Sibelius, Brahms, Bartók, Dvořák and Schumann. Together with the artistic director, viola player Vladimir Mendelssohn will be performing violinists Minna Pensola, Gian Paolo Peloso and Hannah Tam, cellist Trey Lee and pianist Rachel Cheung. These concerts are organised in cooperation with the local Musicus Society. The Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival has received financial support for setting up cooperation networks in Asia from the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation.
Festival’s traditional spring concert, aimed at the public in the Helsinki capital area, will take place on 31 May. The concert will be held in Vallila, at the headquarters of the OP Financial Group, the main partner of the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival. This concert in Helsinki is entitled Forever Young, and the programme consists of Schumann’s Piano Quartet in C minor, Mendelssohn’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in C major, Handel’s Passacaglia, arranged by Johann Halvorsen, and Dohnányi’s Piano Quintet No. 1 in C minor. The performers of the concert are pianist Heini Kärkkäinen, violinists Tami Pohjola, Antti Tikkanen and Kasmir Uusitupa, viola players Riina Piirilä and Vladimir Mendelssohn, and cellist Tuomas Lehto. Before the concert, the audience is welcome to visit the art exhibition in the OP Group headquarters’ lobby. This exhibition has been compiled from the collections of OP Art Foundation and it displays paintings, photographs and sculptures from the beginning of the 20th century until the present time with work and labour as their joint theme.
After the Helsinki concert, Heini Kärkkäinen, Tami Pohjola, Antti Tikkanen, Tuomas Lehto and Vladimir Mendelssohn will travel to Italy. They will perform at the Mantova Chamber Music Festival as envoys of the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival. The programme in the concert on 2 June will include the Piano Quartet by Mendelssohn and the Piano Quintet by Dohnányi, performed earlier in Helsinki. This year, Kuhmo is one of the festival partners, featuring on the Mantova festival. By the size of the festival, Mantova is double the size of Kuhmo with a total of 200 concert events and 300 performing artists.
After Mantova, the envoy of artists will move on to St. Petersburg, where the next concert will be held on 5 June. The concert will be staged in the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace and organised in cooperation with the music journal Opera+. The concert is entitled Vers la flamme (Towards the flame), after the title of Scriabin’s work, which will be performed in the concert. The works by Dohnányi and Mendelssohn that were performed in Helsinki and Mantova, will also be included in the St. Petersburg concert, and along with them the programme features a set of works by Sibelius and Silent woods by Dvořák. Cooperation of the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival with Russian cultural operators is being carried out with the financial support of the Ministry of Education and Culture.
The manager of the Kuhmo festival Sari Rusanen is pleased with all cooperation: “Without reliable and competent cooperation partners it would be impossible to organise any of these concerts. Luckily, Kuhmo can tap into its wide cooperation network.” The aim of the concert events, organised by the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival throughout the year is to maintain an active contact with concert-going public, artists and other contact groups, make promotion for the summer festival and music courses in Kuhmo, and also to find new clients and new cooperation opportunities.” Already this summer, there will be more than a couple of music course students coming to Kuhmo from Hong Kong” Rusanen says.
This summer’s festival will start in merely a bit over two month’s time. The Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival will take place in Kuhmo between Saturday 14 July and Saturday 28 July.
Further information:
Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, tel. +358 8 652 0936, www.kuhmofestival.fi
Concerts in Hong Kong: http://www.musicussociety.org/en/Press-News/Press-Release/Dances-And-Fairy-Tales-At-Nan-Lian-Garden.html
Concerts in Mantova: www.mantovachamber.com
