Music enhances programme of Turku Congress
A rich musical programme marked the European Heritage Congress 2017 in Turku, Finland. Thanks to the great cooperation of the Turku Music Festival Foundation, the Luciano Pavarotti Foundation and the Matti Salminen Foundation, Europa Nostra put together a wonderful programme for the European Heritage Awards Ceremony held at St. Michael’s Church on the evening of 15 May. A high-level delegation from Europa Nostra, led by its President Maestro Plácido Domingo, and Europa Nostra Finland undertook an exclusive guided tour of the Sibelius Museum, the only museum totally devoted to music in Finland, on the afternoon of 15 May. Congress participants also enjoyed an enchanting performance of Finnish traditional folk music given by children at the University of Turku on the morning of 13 May at the opening of the forum ‘Sharing Heritage: Citizens Participating in Decision-Making’.
During the European Heritage Awards Ceremony, rising stars in opera, Iván Ayón Rivas (Peru), Elisa Balbo (Italy), Anu Ontronen (Finland) and Markus Suihkonen (Finland), accompanied on piano by Paolo Andreoli (Italy) and Hans-Otto Ehrström (Finland), took the audience on a beautiful musical journey through Europe.
In addition to the Finnish and European anthems, the musical programme included extracts from Svarta Rosor by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius; La Bohème by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini; Vyes’ Tabor Spit by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov; and Rigoletto, La Traviata and Rigoletto by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi.
Watch Awards Ceremony 2017 Musical Programme
Plácido Domingo, with top-level representatives from Europa Nostra and Europa Nostra Finland and other eminent guests visited the Sibelius Museum and paid tribute to the Finnish composer and violinist. The Director of the Museum, Inger Jakobsson-Warn, gave a guided tour of the exhibition dedicated to the life and work of Jean Sibelius. Apart from its unique collection on Sibelius, the museum’s archive contains some 2,000 instruments of traditional music from across the world.
The delegation was composed of Europa Nostra’s Executive President Denis de Kergorlay, Board member Professor Hermann Parzinger and Secretary General Sneška Quaedvlieg-Mihailović, Europa Nostra Finland’s President Tapani Mustonen and Vice-President Benito Casagrande, Liisa Ketomäki, Managing Director of the Turku Music Festival Foundation, Nicoletta Mantovani, Founder of the Luciano Pavarotti Foundation and wife of the late Maestro Pavarotti, who was accompanied by her daughter Alice Pavarotti, and the Finnish opera singer Matti Salminen.
Finland’s national public TV station YLE broadcast a news piece about the visit to the Sibelius museum and the Awards Ceremony in Turku, including extracts from an exclusive interview (start-end: 16:45-19:15) given by Europa Nostra’s President Maestro Plácido Domingo, the next day
A lively performance of Finnish folk music delivered by children from Kaustinen and Turku opened the Forum ‘Sharing Heritage’. Matti Hakamaki, Director of the Folk Music Institute, welcomed the Forum participants and spoke about ‘The Violin Heritage of Kaustinen’, highlighting the role of civic participation for maintaining the violin heritage in this small town that has one of the oldest folk music festivals in Finland.
