New festival brings selection of light chamber music to Helsinki

Anastasia Injushina

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As lively and versatile as Helsinki is as a musical city, one thing that it has lacked has been a festival of chamber music.
      Today, Tuesday, the Helsinki Spring Light Chamber Music event is being kicked off at the Temppeliaukio Church (The Church in the Rock). The event should go some way to satisfying the hunger of friends of the genre.
      “Advance sales have been brisk. Already a third of the tickets have been sold”, says the artistic director of the festival, pianist Anastasia Injushina. This suggests that there is demand for an event of this type.
     
Injushina, who was born in St. Petersburg, worked as a pianist for the ballet and orchestra of the Finnish National Opera.
      She left the Opera after getting her two children, a girl and a boy, who are now five and two years old respectively.
      Injushina says that she feels a need to find a new direction in her life.
      Slightly over a year ago she had a telephone conversation with her former teacher Ralf Gothóni, in which she discussed her own hopes as well.
      “Ralf said that it is embarrassing that there is no chamber music festival in Helsinki. He thought at the same time that we might establish one. He proposed that I should be the artistic director.”
     
She resisted the idea for a while. She felt that she would not be capable of something like that, because she did not have prior experience.
      Now Injushina has no regrets that she agreed to Gothóni’s suggestion. She has received good advice from Gothóni, who is the artistic advisor of the festival.
      She also appreciates the support that she has received from her husband, who has a job in business management, and has taught his wife management skills.
      As the festival’s artistic director, Anastasia Injushina has not had to be involved in the practical arrangements and coordination of concerts, which were dealt with by the festival’s producer Aleksi Malmberg, to Injushina’s great relief.
     
Both Injushina and Gothóni felt that the spring would be a good time for the festival.
      “Ralf has such a tight schedule that only two times would suit him. Early May was the right time for me. What have people longed for after a long winter? Light and warmth, naturally. Now we are also offering the warmth of chamber music.”
      She chose Temppeliaukio Church as a concert venue for many reasons. The location is central, and people like to go there. She has performed there herself, and likes it.
      The classical focus is a deliberate decision, and it will also be followed in next year’s festival.
      “There are so many pearls of chamber music that there are enough for the next ten festivals, if need be.”
      The festival’s budget is rather more than EUR 100,000.
     
“With the recession things started looking bad, because we did not get as many sponsors as we would have liked. Fortunately, private individuals started to help us.”
      Injushina got plenty of hints from Gothóni on getting artists to come here, but she made some of her own choices herself.
      Injushina herself will play in concerts on Tuesday and Sunday. One reason why she likes chamber music is that she will not have to play solo.
     
Injushina was 19 when she came to Finland from St. Petersburg in 1991.
      Two years earlier she had played as an orchestra soloist in Lahti and took such a liking to Finland that she wanted to come here to live for a longer time.
      Now she has Finnish citizenship.
      She does not go to visit relatives in St. Petersburg very much, as her father, an engineer, builds bridges in Colombia. One of her brothers works as a shipbuilding engineer in Ecuador, and the other is a biologist in Puerto Rico.
      She has had some Latin American influence herself. “Thirty years ago I was in Brazil for five years with my family. We lived near Iguacu Falls and my father built bridges there as well. From there we moved to Mexico."
     
     
Helsinki Spring Light Chamber Music. Concerts on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday this week at Temppeliaukio Church (Lutherinkatu 3).


Links:
  Helsinki Spring Light Chamber Music

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