Naantali Music Festival in June 2020 is cancelled
Due to coronavirus pandemic Naantali Music Festival 2020 is cancelled and postponed to next summer 2021. The program will remain almost the same.
Naantali Music Festival will be held from 8 to 19 June 2021.
The tickets are available now in Lippupiste!
Press Release
Naantali Music Festival will delight its audiences with a varied programme between 2 and 13 June 2020. An exceptional number of singers, impressive orchestral visits and new concert venues will feature in the festival this year, as we mark the Beethoven and Sallinen anniversaries with a wide selection of music by both composers and another world premiere.
Artistic Director Arto Noras has once again compiled a splendidly versatile festival programme, opening on an opus 41 theme on Tuesday 2 June with a concert of opus 41 works by Boccherini, Sibelius, Mendelssohn and Saint-Saëns. This concert will feature the Key Ensemble chamber choir and violinist Petteri Iivonen, who was appointed concertmaster of the Paris Opera in autumn 2019. Festival artists will include a comprehensive array of leading international musicians, with début appearances by pianist Itamar Golan and cellist Claudio Bohórquez. Other notable performers will include flautist Patrick Gallois, cellist Frans Helmerson, violinists Elina Vähälä and Mihaela Martin, and Radovan Vlatković, who is widely regarded as the world’s finest horn virtuoso.
Naantali Music Festival will once again welcome the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. Conducted by Okko Kamu, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra will perform with leading soloists Barry Douglas (piano) and acclaimed baritone Waltteri Torikka, who will make his Naantali début. The concert programme will also feature works by Beethoven and Sallinen to mark the anniversaries of these composers. The soloists appearing with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra will be soprano Johanna Rusanen-Kartano, cellist Arto Noras, and an international wind quintet in the second concert. These concerts will feature music by Sallinen, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák and Kuusisto. Both concerts of the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra will be conducted by Jaakko Kuusisto.
World-famous mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter will visit Naantali for the second time. This Grammy Award-winning opera singer and veteran of numerous major roles will perform a diverse programme of songs by Mahler, Strauss, Bach, Poulenc and Bernstein.
Naantali Music Festival will collaborate closely with the Turku Book Fair this year. A Behold the Northern Sky concert will see legendary actors Seela Sella and Esko Salminen interpreting Finnish poetry from the anthology by this name compiled by Book Fair Programme Director Jenni Haukio with Nordic music by Sibelius, Grieg and Nielsen. Performing artists will include violinists Elina Vähälä and Jaakko Kuusisto, cellists Claudio Bohórquez and Samuli Peltonen, and pianists Barry Douglas and Juhani Lagerspetz. Partnership activities will also continue in various ways at the Turku Book Fair in early October.
One new venue in 2020 will be the Sibelius Museum in Turku, where Naantali Music Festival will arrange a Sibelius concert on 8 June. Together with the popular Casa Haartman concerts, this event will further strengthen co-operation with the Åbo Akademi Foundation. The offshore archipelago at Naantali provides many other unique concert venues, with the Dikseli Heritage Centre at Röölä in Rymättylä and Merimasku Farmer Hall hosting festival events for the first time in 2020.
Familiar from previous appearances at the Naantali Winter Concerts, the Meta4 string quartet will now perform at our summer festival for the first time with three concerts, including a special Beethoven concert of its own. A top quartet in the rising generation, Seele will début at Naantali in 2020 with a programme including music by Schubert and Mozart. We shall also hear the Fourtune cello quartet, and the Turbo Ensemble on genuine baroque period instruments at Raisio Church. The lighter festival programme will include a dinner concert at the Kaivohuone restaurant featuring Rajaton star Aili Ikonen performing a programme ranging from jazz to popular music with her own ensemble. Appearing for the first time in the Turku Region, the New Skipper Quartet will entertain an audience at the Naantali Spa Ballroom on 5 June. The members of this line-up are familiar figures from the Finnish National Opera, and from the Fabulous Bäckström Brothers and Club for Five. Jazz/classical pianist and composer Iiro Rantala’s My Finnish Calendar concert will also feature in the festival programme, providing a whole year musical weather report on the Finnish climate.
A novel feature of our 2020 programme will be the narrated concert Riding with a colleague, hosted in person by the concert programme compiler, composer Olli Kortekangas with a narration that delves into both the music and the life story of Beethoven. An In honorem Maris concert has already featured in our regular festival programme for a decade, and will be organised this year in association with the Unique Archipelago Sea project to follow its Archipelago Sea Seminar. The programme will include music by Saariaho, Mozart and Schubert. Our festival will conclude on 13 June with the closing For Whom the Cellos Play concert, featuring soprano Soile Isokoski with the Total Cello Ensemble and Leonardo Chiodo, together with a broad array of cellists in various ensembles. The concert programme will include the world première of Sallinen’s Sonata for Four Cellos.
The fifteenth season of Naantali Winter Concerts will be organised in partnership with Naantali Cultural Services on 29 February and 7 March. The first Winter Concert will celebrate the milestone years of Beethoven and Sallinen, and the second will be dedicated to the music of Mozart.
The Vallis Gratiae Academy will again attract gifted young string musicians to its training and master classes under the guidance of festival artists, and we shall have an opportunity to hear these rising stars in Naantali at a Young Masters concert in Kristoffer Hall on 12 June. The popular Naantali Children’s Music Festival will also be arranged again for the seventh time between 5 and 7 June in association with Save the Children Finland. The full programme for this event will be announced at the beginning of April.
Naantali Music Festival will arrange a concert tour to the Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia at the end of September in partnership with the Matkapojat travel organisation.
Ticket sales for all concerts will begin at the lippu.fi ticket outlet on Tuesday 4 February.
Additional programme information is available on our website at www.naantalinmusiikkijuhlat.fi
For further details please contact:
Tiina Tunturi, Executive Director
tiina.tunturi@naantali.fi, tel. +358 44 516 1718