Elina Vähälä, born in Iowa, USA, but moved to Finland as a child, is one of Finland’s most internationally renowned violinists. Vähälä, who started practising at the age of three, remembers being inspired to play the violin after watching the Viuluviikarit programme on television. After her grandmother gave her her own violin, the familiar TV sounds, legatos and vibratos became her own personal reality. The career choice has been clear ever since.
Vähälä began studying violin at the Päijät-Häme Conservatory in Lahti as a student of Seppo Reinikainen and continued with Pertti Sutinen for eight years. During those years she also studied at the Kuhmo Violin School with Zinaida Gilels, Ilya Grubert and Pavel Vernikov. At the Sibelius Academy Vähälä studied with Tuomas Haapanen. Other important mentors for Vähälä have been Ana Chumachenco and Peter Csaba. Towards the end of her studies, she won the prestigious Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York in 1999.
Vähälä began her career as a concert soloist at the age of 12, performing with the Lahti City Orchestra in his hometown. Since then, the orchestra has continued to work closely with her, including selecting her as Young Soloist of the Year in 1993-1994, and she has been a regular guest of the orchestra on tours of Asia, South America and Central Europe.
Vähälä has earned a reputation as a luminous and exceptionally versatile musician with a wide-ranging repertoire that spans music from the Baroque to the present day and new works by the great composers of our time. In 2012, she premiered a commissioned violin concerto by Jaakko Kuusisto, which she also recorded for BIS in 2013 together with John Corigliano’s Red Violin Concerto. In September 2015, Vähälä performed a rarely performed early version of the Sibelius Violin Concerto, considered impossible, in a televised concert as soloist with the Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu. Her most recent major concerto was premiered by Kalevi Aho in 2016. Aulis Sallinen has also dedicated works to Vähälä.
More recently, Vähälä has also appeared as a soloist with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and as a chamber musician at the Adelaide Festival, among others.
Chamber music is Vähälä’s burning love. In recent years she has played in Kuhmo, Naantali, Pradesh Casals Festival, Delft, Eindhoven and West Cork and Clandeboye Festivals in Ireland. Cooperation with festivals will continue to flourish in the coming seasons.
In addition to performing, Vähälä is a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She is also the artistic director of the Naantali Music Festival.
Elina Vähälä plays a violin built by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini in 1780.
