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

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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 begins her 2025/26 season with the Tapiola Sinfonietta performing Bruch’s Violin Concerto no. 1 under Andrew Manze. She goes on to debut with the MAV Symphony Orchestra in Budapest to commemorate the Finnish Independence Day with Kuusisto’s Violin Concerto which was written for her, followed by a concert with the Vaasa City Orchestra. January 2026 sees both a concert with Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, and also the first of this season’s two concerts with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. She will be performing with them again in March, where she performs Beethoven’s Triple Concerto at the Gala concert of the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw alongside Nicolas Alstaedt and Alexander Lonquich.

She later goes to Toronto Symphony Orchestra alongside Hannu Lintu to perform the world premiere of a violin concerto by Liam Ritz. Returning to Lahti Symphony Orchestra, she will perform Bruch’s Violin Concerto no. 1, and later in the season she performs Schumann’s Violin Concerto with the Jyväskylä Sinfonia.

A highlight of the season is a performance at the Concertgebouw with the Radio Philharmonisch Orkest, where she will be playing Sibelius’ Violin Concerto. In the same concert, conducted by Oscar Jockel, she will be performing a new piece by Jockel himself for violin, electronics, choir and orchestra.

Last season, Elina gave world premieres of Cecilia Damström’s Earth Songs with the chamber ensemble Tampere Raw, and also of Olli Mustonen’s Violin Concerto No. 2 ‘Larin Paraske’ with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Nicholas Collon. She also gave the Finnish premiere of Samy Moussa’s Adrano with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra under Dalia Stasevska. Further highlights included a re-invitation to 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.

Highlights of previous seasons include performances with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg Symphony, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Dortmund Philharmoniker, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, the RTVE, Nordic Chamber Orchestra, Norrköping Symphony, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Wrocław Philharmonic, Janacek Philharmonic, Belgrade Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic, the Adelaide Festival, Columbus Symphony Ohio, Princeton Symphony, Houston Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Symphony Nova Scotia, and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. Elina is a regular guest of all major Finnish orchestras.

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, 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 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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