HELSINKI EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL
Classics, experimenters and a world that has lost its sanity
The theme of Helsinki Early Music Festival 2024 is the fruitful tension between the new and the old. It’s realised both in dialogues and crosses between contemporary and historic music and in the innovative trends of centuries past. The surprising expressive possibilities of both Baroque and folk instruments and electronic instruments in music from different eras offer delicious experiences. The inspiration for the festival concerts comes from new and old directions: the digital Middle Ages, the meaningful and affective Baroque, Arctic flowers, ornaments, friendships and celebrations. The retrofuturistic hybrid club and the multigenerational concerts bring us across borders towards the end of the festival, when the world has lost its sanity!
Encanto Music ry is the organisation behind the festival. It brings together experimenters, skilled and curious chamber musicians and other artists from different countries. The association is responsible for the festival arrangements in general and in particular for the concerts in the German Church and the club evening in Kapsäkki. In the German Church we get to enjoy a joint programme with early Baroque music by the Finnish Baroque Orchestra and Floridante from Estonia as well as a Baroque programme seasoned with folk music by Floridante and the soprano Maria Valdmaa. This time, the Encanto House Band is made up of musicians from Germany, Iceland and Finland. Under the leadership of Georg Kallweit, they perform a programme with music by Bach, Bach, Bach and Bach. Ensemble Gamut! studies the theme of Arctic endangered flowers with music by Hildegard von Bingen and Aino Peltomaa. The club evening brings the audience to the digital Middle Ages together with Thomas Ignatius and on a search for the soul of the electric clavichord together with Jonte Knif.
The Finnish Baroque Orchestra is the main partner of the festival. The festival starts with a concert with FiBO and the British top vocal ensemble Solomon’s Knot in the Temppeliaukio Church. FiBO is also responsible for the multigenerational concerts in the Music Centre and in Kanneltalo. They feature short pieces from composition workshops for young people. The festivities continue as FiBO celebrates its 35th anniversary with a concert in the House of Nobility together with Tuuli Lindeberg (soprano) and Erik Bosgraaf.
After the festival concerts we present a satellite production in the Almi Hall. The opera Earthrise is a co-production by the Finnish National Opera, the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, La Chambre aux échos and Encanto Music ry. It tells the story of a world that has lost its sanity.
The artistic planning group for the festival consists of Baroque musicians with a close relationship to interdisciplinary productions of different kinds and a keen interest in expanding international collaboration. The musicians are the harpsichordist Marianne Henriksson, the violist Laura Kajander, the violinist Anthony Marini and the cellist Lea Pekkala.
FiBO @Akifoto
Classics, experimenters and a world that has lost its sanity:
MEDIA
“[Of all operatic pieces about Kepler] EARTHRISE is the one tying all ends into the most multi-layered and coherent theatrical entity… Taken as a whole, EARTHRISE succeeds in the rare feat of transcribing historical elements and fantasy into meaningful stage drama, an original creation adopting its own expressive tools while staying true to its sources. Wrought of its seemingly diverse original materials, EARTHRISE results in profoundly organic artistic unity, a music theater work keeping its audience engaged from the very outset to long after the final double-bar.”
- Jari Juhani Kallio, Adventures in Music / Rondo Magazine
“How to turn natural science into a compelling stage work and an opera of sorts is an impossible puzzle to which the team of Barrière–Egecioglu–Henriksson–Koskinen offered a solution. This is the Gesamtkunstwerk for our time, where different themes and time levels were tied together. I must say: successfully. This was the best Barrière staging I've seen so far, and Koskinen's best musical creation.“
- Eero Tarasti, Amfion
“The appropriately sharp humor hits its mark and audience makes the text their own… EARTHRISE is a work of civilization.”
- Jari Hoffrén, Elementori
“Fresh and difficult to define… I am considering whether I should see it again.” ×