The 56th Kuhmo Chamber Music is a Celebration of Celebrations!
9.1.2026
Finland Festivals’ Festival of the Year 2026 celebrates with the theme “Celebrations and Ceremonies”
The 56th edition of Kuhmo Chamber Music is a veritable celebration of celebration, a feast of festivities, and will take place from 12th to 25th July 2026. Artistic directors Minna Pensola and Antti Tikkanen have put together a programme around the idea of “Celebrations and Ceremonies”. The two-week festival programme comprises 60 ticketed concerts celebrating everything from Easter to Christmas, from Mother’s Day to graduation ceremonies. The festival celebrates equality, the Pride movement, biodiversity, not forgetting many composers’ anniversaries, Finnish flag days, and rituals from different cultures.
Artistic directors Minna Pensola and Antti Tikkanen describe how they came up with this year’s theme. “The theme of this year’s festival was still only a vague idea when different causes for celebration suddenly started popping into our heads with increasing frequency. Of course, we already knew that Oulu, Kuhmo and 38 other municipalities from northern Finland were going to be a European Capital of Culture 2026, but to our surprise, a number of celebrations within our own festival fell in 2026 too. It seemed obvious that the planets were aligning. Kuhmo Chamber Music 2026 looks set to be one great big party”.
Towards the end of 2025, another piece of good news came from the Finland Festivals organisation, one that settled the festival’s theme once and for all: Kuhmo Chamber Music was named Festival of the Year 2026.
Oulu and the Region: European Capital of Culture 2026
Among the highlights of this year’s festival will be the many works newly commissioned around the various themes of the Oulu2026 Project. Olli Mustonen’s Sonata for two violins (theme: Cool Contrasts) will be premiered on Friday 17th July by Minna and Antti themselves. Cecilia Damström’s new wind quintet (theme: Wild City) is named Raakku after the endangered Finnish freshwater pearl mussel. This will be premiered by the Orsino Ensemble on Monday 20th July. Krishna Nagaraja’s Peripheries for String Quartet (theme: Brave Hinterland) will be heard on Thursday 23rd July, performed by the Meta4 String Quartet. Each new work is programmed thematically, and the composers will present their works on the morning of each premiere.
Significant anniversaries in 2026
The Kuhmo Chamber Music 2026 programme is a celebration of a good many birthdays and anniversaries too. Among those celebrating this year, the festival’s very own Meta4 turns 25, the Storioni Trio turns 30 and the Danel Quartet turns 35. The festival’s own organisation the Kuhmo Music Society turns 60 and the Patrons’ Association of the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival turns 50. Other long-standing partners are celebrating too: in 2026, the City of Kuhmo will celebrate its 40th anniversary and the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE a full century! The Storioni Trio and the Danel Quartet were given free rein to plan their own anniversary concerts, and each of our other partners has a programme dedicated especially to them.
The concert celebrating the City of Kuhmo comprises works that were composed as birthday presents. These include Robert Schumann’s string quartet that he wrote as a birthday gift for his wife and a present that Olli Mustonen composed for the cellist Steven Isserlis. The concert dedicated to YLE’s one-hundred-year history takes us back to the narrated radio broadcasts from the early days of the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Meta4’s 25th anniversary concert takes us through the 270-year history of the string quartet in barely hours. Our compère for this concert is the composer and writer Osmo Tapio Räihälä.
This summer, Kainuu’s very own diva Ulla Tapaninen returns to her roots. The After Eight Comedy Show, curated in honour of Tapaninen’s 70th birthday, contains excerpts from the work The Short-Tempered Clavier by musical satirist PDQ Bach.
Our children’s concert celebrates the birthday of Ella, the character created by writer Timo Parvela. The children’s party concert features works by promising youngsters Clara Schumann, Gioacchino Rossini, Felix Mendelssohn, Olli Mustonen and Dmitri Shostakovich. We also celebrate the birth of the string quartet itself.
Seasons and rituals
There are many celebrations associated with the change of the seasons. This year, we will have concerts dedicated to Christmas, Easter, All Saints’ Day, mothers, fathers, friends and entrepreneurs. Finland has many official ‘flag days’, but we will celebrate a few important ones: International Children’s Rights Day, Equality Day (Minna Canth’s Day) and Finnish Music Day (Jean Sibelius’s birthday). At our concert Spring Celebration, we will all come together for a rendition of Gaudeamus igitur in honour of those freshly graduated from high school.
The festival begins with a sense of carnival. Our journey takes us from Brazil to Venice, with a stopover in Buenos Aires. In one of our concerts, even animals have a carnival all of their own. Animal-themed texts associated with this classic will be read between the movements by actress Katja Küttner.
The Pride movement and hunting culture will each get a concert of their own. The concert Hunting Party takes a dark turn as a group of boastful hunters gradually turn into hunted predators in Jörg Widmann’s String Quartet No. 3, “The Hunt”.
Translator couple Ville Keynäs and Anu Partanen have curated a concert programme spanning the rituals that punctuate the human life cycle. Texts will be performed by the actress Katja Küttner.
The concert I Do showcases the most beautiful wedding music and composers’ musical wedding gifts to one another, while in the concert Condolences we cast our minds to the saddest of times.
Other celebrations
On the first weekend of the festival, the concerts with an interval all have a little surprise up their sleeves. Old meets new on the evening of Friday 17th July as tango queen Arja Koriseva takes the audience on a journey through songs familiar and less familiar, accompanied by a band assembled by the core members of the Alakulo Ensemble. On Saturday 18th July, we shall go to the ball! We will begin the evening in the spirit of then roaring 20s in Lentua Hall, then during the interval the audience will relocate to the foyer of Kuhmo Arts Centre. Headlining the fun and games will be soloists Helena Juntunen and Ulla Tapaninen, accompanied by accordion wizard Niko Kumpulainen and a whole host of this year’s festival artists.
At the concert Adults Only on Monday 13th July, we celebrate with wine and song and the risqué Sonata Erotica by Erwin Schulhoff. And after all the partying comes the inevitable crash. Perhaps the concerts Consumer-Fest and Awakening might give a taste of what is to come? In any case, the concert Hair of the Dog needs no explanation.
Summer Films
The viola player–composer Yuval Gotlibovich has composed music to the original 1922 version of Nosferatu, directed by F. W. Murnau. The composer will perform his film score live with the cellist David Cohen.
Nosferatu isn’t the only film we will be screening this summer. The road movie From Midnight Sun to Eternity by designer and filmmaker Paola Suhonen has garnered awards and accolades across the world, and this year we will screen it twice, free of charge: once at Kuhmo Arts Centre and once at Vesantalo, belonging to the Ylä-Vieksi Village Association.
Around 300 works
In total, this year’s festival programme features around 300 individual works. Of those, around half were composed before the 20th century (a celebration of the classics!) and half during the period from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day (a celebration of equality and diversity!).
Free events
In addition to our ticketed concerts, we will host around 25 events that are completely free of charge. These include the Heart of the Day events, the concerts of the music course students, art exhibitions, film screenings, and outdoor concerts in the market square. The morning Heart of the Day sessions explore each day’s programme in greater depth and introduce listeners to performers and composers. In addition to the artistic directors and festival artists, these sessions will be led by composer and writer Osmo Tapio Räihälä. The concerts featuring students from the Kuhmo Master Courses give audiences a unique chance to hear the stars of the future.
This summer’s art exhibition is curated in collaboration with Pertti Ketonen (Himmelblau Printmaking Studio) and fine-art scholar Markku Valtonen. This year, the foyer of the Kuhmo Arts Centre will host an exhibition entitled Blue Sky, celebrating the works of the Himmelblau Printmaking Studio.
‘Kamarista’ Educational Programme
Being a part of the musical education that will shape the future has always been an important part of Kuhmo Chamber Music. Summer 2026 will see the inception of a new educational venture entitled ‘Kamarista’, which we are able to kickstart with generous funding from the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation. Each year, the artistic directors will select 2-3 promising ensembles to join in the programme. Participating ensembles will receive instruction and guidance provided by the project’s teachers (Levon Chilingirian, Johannes Meissl and Meta4), they will be able to perform as part of the festival programme where they will learn about interaction with audiences and other festival artists and will have the opportunity to make new acquaintances and network. The participating groups at this year’s festival are the Karelia Quartet from London and the Modulor Quartet from Basel.
Venues
This year’s concerts are centred around three different wooden buildings: Kuhmo’s wooden church (completed in 1816), Kuhmo Arts Centre (from 1993) and the Tuupala Primary School (completed in 2018). Other concert venues in and around Kuhmo are the outdoor Kide stage, the chapel, Lentiira Church, and Vesantalo. The details of our free outdoor events will be finalised later in the spring and will take place weather-permitting. Concerts in the neighbouring municipalities include performances at Sotkamo Church and Nuokkari, Iisalmi.
110 Artists
The festival brings together 110 international artists. Among those already well known to Kuhmo audiences are pianists Olli Mustonen and Heini Kärkkäinen; violinists Sergey Malov, Elina Vähälä and Daniel Rowland; viola player Yuval Gotlibovich; cellists David Cohen, Trey Lee, Tuomas Lehto and Maja Bogdanović; flautist Niamh McKenna; oboist Nicholas Daniel; clarinettist Matthew Hunt; and baritone Arttu Kataja. The programme also features festival favourites Meta4, the Storioni Trio and the Danel Quartet.
Artists appearing at Kuhmo Chamber Music for the first time this year include cellist Johannes Rostamo, violinist Maia Cabeza, viola player Jason Fisher, singer Arja Koriseva, the wind ensemble Orsino Ensemble, the Brontë Piano Trio, and Musicus Soloists Hong Kong.
Funding and Partnerships
The combined budget of Kuhmo Chamber Music and its associated music courses amounts to €1,065,000, of which €965,000 is allocated to the festival itself and €100,000 to the courses and masterclasses. Of the festival budget, 55% is projected to be covered by ticket revenue, while 29% will be funded through grants from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the City of Kuhmo. Other grants account for 7%, and other income sources for 9%. Of the courses’ budget, 50% derives from course fees, with the remaining 50% consisting of grants and other income.
Corporate partners of Kuhmo Chamber Music include OP Kaskimaa, Kainuun Sanomat, Kuhmo Oy, No-Pan Auto Oy, Osuuskauppa Maakunta, and Renforsin Ranta. Additional support includes funding from the Oulu Cultural Foundation in connection with the city’s status as European Capital of Culture 2026, as well as invaluable support from the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation for the ‘Kamarista’ Educational Programme.
Further information
Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, tel. +358 44 544 5162
www.kuhmofestival.fi
