Elina Vähälä

Elina Vähälä

Violin

Artistic Director of the Naantali Music Festival

“Impeccable accuracy, a sound that sang, radient and luminous; this young woman shows herself to be a soloist of the highest rank whose ease and presence place her among the rising glories of the violin.”
— Le Monde

Contact

Lorna Neill

+44 (0)7798 531 819
lorna@musicinteralia.com

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Reviews Archive

Soloist Elina Vahala was championed in her earliest years by the orchestra’s former chief conductor Osmo Vanska, and has enjoyed a stellar career, but was making her debut with the SSO. She is an authoritative and poised player … full of expressiveness….Vahala’s playing was never showy, but her cadenzas were absolutely compelling and of a piece with the shaping of a demanding work that she and Lintu structured beautifully from start to finish. Glasgow concertgoers … would be unlikely to hear this music played better than it was by these Finns with the home team. - Keith Bruce, The Herald, 4th November 2022

Added to the mix was the formidable American-born Finnish violinist Elina Vähälä, whose unshakeable, coruscating presence in the Shostakovich injected fire, obstinacy, tenderness and pathos into a complex, at times harrowing, late work….Such a vital concoction of responses filled this riveting performance… a piquancy arising from delicate interchanges between the soloist and orchestra principals…But it was in the finale that Vähälä found every opportunity to showcase her combative energy and stimulating musicality. Like a mischievous child, she threw truculent pronouncements at the orchestra…. (Conductor) Lintu played both fellow protagonist and artful arbiter in this electrifying trading of insults, forging a synthesis that held things together while maintained the inexorable swagger. - Ken Walton, VoxCarnyx,  4th November 2022

“There are few concertos that test the full range of a violinist’s artistry the way the Szymanowski does—and there are few violinists who ace that test with the subtle confidence of Elina Vähälä. Whether she’s singing out the music’s stratospheric lyricism, deftly navigating its mercurial shifts in emotional terrain, teasing out its subtle timbral demands, harnessing its long range rhetoric, knocking out the motoric Stravinsky-isms, or keeping the phrases from sagging under the weight of their florid ornamentation, Vähälä has the measure of this endlessly intricate score—as well as the technical brilliance necessary to toss it off without strain.”

Fanfare Magazine (Peter J. Rabinowitz), July/August 2019

“Her control of phrasing, and especially the ends of phrases provided evidence of a thoughtful musician who has all the technical accomplishment and confidence she needs to project her thoughts. Her intonation is sure and her tone fine, perfectly formed. In her highly musical performance of the Brahms’s D minor sonata her delicacy of sound and the rythm in the third movement was marvelous, as was the drive in the finale. She breathed each movement, and even the whole sonata, as one.”

New York Times

“Elina Vähälä played Corigliano's concerto in Turku in brilliantly glorious manner, in ecstasy of striking mastery, that was regulated by bright, polished control.”

Helsingin Sanomat

“The fluent, stylish performance by the gifted Finnish violinist Elina Vahala, in her Chicago debut, revealed a musician whose brilliant technique is matched by abundant spirit, sensitivity and imagination.”

Chicago Tribune

 

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Biography

Born in the US and raised in Finland, Elina Vähälä made her orchestral debut with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra at the age of twelve and was later chosen by Osmo Vänskä as the orchestra’s ‘Young Master Soloist’.   Since then, her versatility and charismatic performances have won praise from audiences and musicians alike: ‘a fluent, stylish and gifted musician whose brilliant technique is matched by an abundant spirit, sensitivity and imagination’ (Chicago Tribune).

Elina’s 2024/25 season starts off with chamber performances; first in Monkstown in Dublin, then with a visit to Holstebro in Denmark, and a re-invitation to Seoul International Music Festival.   She will premiere a new violin concerto by Cecilia Damström Earth Songs  in Tampere Hall in September, and in December she will be premiering Olli Mustonen’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Nicholas Collon on Finland’s Independence Day.  A further highlight is the violin concerto Adrano by Samy Moussa which will be the first Finnish performance together with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and Dalia Stasevska in the spring. 

Further guest engagements include revisiting Wrocław Philharmonic to perform Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1, and a performance of Britten’s Violin Concerto with the Hamburg Symphoniker under Sylvain Cambreling.

2023/24 saw performances in the US and Canada, with Columbus Symphony Ohio and Symphony Nova Scotia, in the UK with Dalia Stasevska and BBC Symphony Orchestra in London as a part of a Total Immersion project on the works of Missy Mazzoli, and across Europe in Slovenia, Sweden, and Finland.   She also returned to Hamburg Symphony Symphoniker, Norrköping Symphony, Tampere Philharmonic and Lahti Symphony. 

Highlights of previous seasons include performances with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg Symphony, Janacek Philharmonic, Belgrade Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic, and the Adelaide Festival, Houston Symphony, Princeton Symphony, Oulu Symphony, Turku Philharmonic, Kymi Sinfonietta, Nordic Chamber Orchestra, Wrocław Philharmonic.  Elina appears regularly with Finnish orchestras and is also a regular guest of orchestras including Houston Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Dortmund Philharmoniker, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, RTVE

Elina collaborates with high-profile conductors, including Leonard Slatkin, Carlos Kalmar, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Okko Kamu, Jakub Hrůša, Thierry Fischer, Sakari Oramo, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Leif Segerstam, Josep Caballé-Domenech, and Alexander Liebreich. 

An advocate for new music, Elina has given world premieres of Aulis Sallinen's Chamber Concerto, Curtis Curtis-Smith's Double Concerto, Jaakko Kuusisto’s Violin Concerto, and Kalevi Aho’s Concerto No. 2, all of which were written for her, as well as Jan Sandström’s Concerto.   In addition, she gave the first Nordic performance of Corigliano’s Violin Concerto ‘The Red Violin’ and is one of the composer’s soloists of choice for this work.   Befitting her Finnish roots, she has premiered many chamber works and violin concertos by Finnish composers, including those by Magnus Lindberg and Jaakko Kuusisto, and is one of very few to perform the Sibelius concerto in its early version. 

Elina is committed to the development of skills and opportunities for young musicians.    In 2009 she launched the Violin Academy, a masterclass-based educational project for highly talented young Finnish violinists funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.    Previously professor at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe, Germany, she has been professor at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna since September 2019.     

Elina plays a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin made in 1780. 

 
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