Rauma Festivo Chamber Music Festival
Rauma Festivo is a five-day chamber music festival that takes place in the unique surroundings of Old Rauma, the largest wooden town centre in the Nordic countries.The concerts, matinees, lectures, street musicians, and pop up concerts performing in usually closed private gardens make music and world-class artists available to all, locals and visitors.
Amongst other venues, chamber music is heard in Poselli, a former chapel, which is very highly regarded for its acoustics. There are also concerts in the Church of the Holy Cross (Pyhän Ristin kirkko), a medieval church built by the Rauma Franciscan Friary. Daily there are also concerts free of charge which are a great opportunity for children and the ones new to chamber music to hear live acoustic music being performed.
In 2023 Rauma Festivo celebrated its 40th anniversary. The festival was founded by Ralf Gothóni and is now established as the most high-level festival in town. The current artistic director is violinist and opera director Siljamari Heikinheimo (siljamariheikinheimo.com).
Welcome to Rauma Festivo!
Press release 8.4.2024
The air will be filled with melodies of
the spring and the song of autumn in Rauma in August
In August Chamber Music Festival Rauma Festivo will echoe the richness of the four seasons with 24 artists. The now published program will be supplemented later in the spring with events with no entrance fee. The programme put together by Siljamari Heikinheimo brings beloved classics, interdisciplinarity and new perspectives to the atmospheric concert venues of Old Rauma with interpretations by Finland’s foremost artists.
Sources of inspiration
”The richness of the cycle of seasons is a heritage that we should all cherish. The theme of the festival, Vuodenaikamme [Our Seasons], gives us a chance to pause at this topic,” says violinist and director Siljamari Heikinheimo, who has been artistic director of Rauma Festivo since 2020. ”Seasons with their changing weather phenomena have inspired composers and other artists throughout the ages. In my artistic design, I allowed myself to associate freely with the seasons and to be carried away.”
In the opening concert waters flow with the song ”Vedet ja jäät” [The Waters and Ice], when vibraphonist Panu Savolainen joins forces with our country’s most legendary folk music group, JPP, founded in 1982. In 2021, the centuries old Kaustinen fiddle playing was added to UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list, and now it’ll encounter the UNESCO world heritage site of Old Rauma, in the Church of the Holy Cross, built by the Franciscan brothers more than 500 years ago.
Seasons through the eyes of contemporaries
The young shining star from international concert stages, violinist Tami Pohjola will perform the most famous descriptions of weather phenomena of all time, Antonio Vivaldi’s virtuoso Four Seasons, at Rauma Festivo. She’s accompanied by multi-talented festival orchestra that also bursts into song. Four singer-musician-actors brought together by theater, Anni Elif Egecioglu, Anna Victoria Eriksson, Ulriikka Heikinheimo and Emilia Nyman will interpret the summer hits as Sommaren är kort and You Must Believe in Springarrangements by Jukka Nylund.
The Seasons of Love composed by Outi Tarkiainen for clarinet and string quartet praises the power of love in its various manifestations throughout life. The piece will be performed by Tarkiainen’s spouse, clarinetist Lauri Sallinen to whom the quintet is dedicated. Soprano Mari Palo and pianist Salla Pynssi delve into the memories of the fading life of a wonderful spring with the last songs of Richard Strauss.
Crossing genre boundaries
Composer, arranger, and pianist Jukka Nykänen’s profile concert Elämäni kevät [The Spring of My Life] fulfills not only Nykänen’s own wishes, but also the desires of the audience. Soprano Mari Palo, singer-actress Emilia Nyman, violinist Siljamari Heikinheimo and cellist Senja Rummukainen are also involved in creating an evening that ranges from Merikanto’s Kesäillan valssi to the moods of the musical Les Misèrables and Schumann’s lieds to Piazzolla’s tango rhythms.
Actror Miiko Toiviainen joins Nykänen and Palo in the Syksyn laulu [Song of the Fall] performance. We’ll hear some music of Sibelius, Kuula and Juice Leskinen overlapping with the poems of Aleksis Kivi, Saima Harmaja and many others that vibrate with yearning, hope and the spirit of autumn.
Low Thresholds
Dance artist Auri Ahola and jazz drummer Jaska Lukkarinen met in August 2022 in Rauma Festivo’s popular Carpe diem surprise concert series. An improvised, intense duet under the scorching sun in one of the private gardens of the old town ignited the collaboration of the two. The result of of this encounter will be experienced in the concerts called Tie lumen peitossa [the Road Covered with Snow]. In the same event we’ll enjoy a violin-cello duo inspired by a mystic who lived in the 16th century, a revelry titled Kaamoskapriisi [Polar Night Caprice] and the opening of Schubert’s Winterreise series as a wordless version. ”You are welcome to Rauma Festivo to experience your very first concert, but we also guarantee that even our most experienced guests will be titillated by unprecedented musical pieces and combinations of different genres of art”, says executive director Anna Grundström.