Next year, we bring you a Scandinavian Utopia

After fourteen days featuring almost 60 concerts and over 20 free events, the 54th Kuhmo Chamber Music festival reached its glorious conclusion on Saturday 27th July with a performance of Vivaldi’s La Folia, incorporating Armenian folk music and improvisations from many other musical cultures. This concert was a great example of the way the festival’s artistic directors Minna Pensola and Antti Tikkanen planned the entire festival programme. Each concert contained something old, something new and something outside the box. The theme of Borderlines was examinedfrom many different angles – geographical, linguistic, cultural, social, spiritual and physical, to name but a few.

The highlights of this year’s festival included the premiere performances of festival commissions by featured composers Sebastian Fagerlund and Lotta Wennäkoski, the Tangomania concert, which sold out earlier in the spring, and a programme of songs composed in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

This year’s festival featured a total of 114 international artists. Alongside the many familiar faces, performances by the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, the Storioni String Trio, the soprano Anu Komsi and the violinist Sini Simonen were particularly well received. Among those appearing at Kuhmo Chamber Music for the very first time, it is safe to say that the Cuarteto Quiroga, the Paddington Trio, the accordionist Janne Valkeajoki and the kantele player Eija Kankaanranta are set to become new festival favourites.

This year’s Kuhmo Chamber Music Summer School attracted 85 students in total. The chamber-music masterclasses proved particularly popular. This year, students travelled to Kuhmo from as far afield as Australia and the USA.

“We are really thrilled at this year’s programme and at all the performers who helped bring it to life. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback, from colleagues and audiences alike, so we’re in a good place to start planning the 55th festival for next year,” say a thrilled Pensola and Tikkanen.

At this year’s festival we managed to get over 21,000 concert visits. In 2021 and 2022, the figure was between 21,000 and 24,000. “It seems that breaking the 21,000 mark is the new normal, which we’ve reached since Covid-19. Before the pandemic, we used to have 5-6 concerts per day; now there are four”, explains festival CEO Sari Rusanen.

“Our goal was to sell tickets to a total value of 500,000€, but this year we didn’t quite get there. We sold around 476,000€, which is still an excellent result. We’ll be able to balance the books by cutting back on some expenses”, Rusanen explains.

“And while the line-up of festival artists has seen some changes, so has the organisational side of things too. Among our 240 staff members, there were lots of first timers. At Kuhmo Chamber Music, we are constantly aware that we need to keep training up the next generation of organisational staff, and in that we have certainly succeeded,” she says.

Scandinavian Utopia

The 55th Kuhmo Chamber Music will take place from 13th to 26th July 2025. Next year’s theme will be a “Scandinavian Utopia”. We will have the opportunity to hear lots of music from the Nordic countries, not forgetting central Europe, of course, and our line-up of performers will focus on artists from across the Nordic region. The programme will also feature a variety of thought-provoking perspectives on environmental concerns. The full programme and list of performers will be published in January 2025.

Thank you to all our supporters!

Kuhmo Chamber Music 2024 has received generous support from the Ministry of Education and Culture, the City of Kuhmo, and the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation. Our corporate sponsors include OP Kuhmo, OP Kainuu, OP Ylä-Kainuu, OP Paltamo, F-Musiikki Oy, Kainuun Sanomat, Kouta Media, Kuhmo Oy, No-Pan Auto Oy, and Osuuskauppa Maakunta.

For more information:

Kuhmo Chamber Music, tel. +358 44 544 5162