Full programme for Musica nova Helsinki now available – Festival leads off with collective Alarm Bells
Finland’s biggest classical music biennale, Musica nova Helsinki, is back again in 2025 on February 5–15, and the full programme has now been released. Leading up to the opening concert is a collective work called Alarm Bells by Tytti Arola in which anyone can take part. The other items on the Musica nova programme include numerous performances by Finnish orchestras and actors in the independent arts sector such as the German ensembles Musikfabrik and Recherche.
Musica nova Helsinki is back again in 2025 with a varied menu of new music on February 5–15: concerts and premieres, live art, discussions and other crossover events. The full offering has now been announced and will be supplemented by a podcast early in the year. The overall theme of Musica nova 2025 is Together, reflecting all the things this may humanly engender, such as communities, collectives, networks, trust, hierarchies, tensions, interaction, dependencies and rituals.
In line with the theme is Alarm Bells, a work by sound artist Tytti Arola leading listeners to the opening concert on February 5. Creating this will be both professional musicians and amateurs, and an open invitation has been extended for volunteers. A group of people joined by a string with little bells attached to it will form a chain from Senate Square to the Cathedral. A single bell has only a soft sound, but when hundreds join together, the sound is magnified and loud. Alarm Bells may also be interpreted as a tacit tinkling appeal: listen to us! The collective experience will be taken up by the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra at its concert in the Cathedral.
Also on the festival programme is a host of concerts by representatives of the independent arts sector. The G Livelab session of the defunensemble will include the premiere of a new work by Jarkko Hartikainen and numerous first performances in Finland, while the concert by the Earth Ears Ensemble at the Helsinki Music Centre will spotlight the premiere of a work by Elias Schomers. The concert by the Korvat auki (Ears Open) association addressing spatial encounters will premiere no fewer than four works for chamber ensemble. The Sibelius Academy is contributing such contemporary music productions as a concert focusing on the viola d’amore by Daniela Braun and Mia Heikkinen and the premieres of new works for this early Baroque instrument by Riikka Talvitie and Tiina Myllärinen.
The German Ensemble Recherche, one of the festival’s international artist visitors, will have two concerts at Musica nova: one with the NYKY Ensemble – the Sibelius Academy’s contemporary music ensemble – and the other the Helsinki Chamber Choir. In addition to the events already announced, there will be a concert by one of the leading contemporary music ensembles, Musikfabrik, led by conductor-composer Enno Poppe, and improvisation on the new Helsinki Music Centre organ by Thierry Escaich from France.
The chief organisers of Musica nova (the Helsinki Festival, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Tapiola Sinfonietta) will be giving concerts as previously announced, as will the Zagros and Uusinta ensembles, the Guards Band, Superpluck, the Vicentino Singers, the Key and the Suut ensembles, among others. Audiences can look forward to numerous world and Finnish premieres, and items from the Shadow Nova project bringing together contemporary-music professionals and colleges’ composition students.
The full festival programme is now available at musicanova.fi. The chief organisers are the Helsinki Festival, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra) and the Society of Finnish Composers.