Sibbe Live!: Runeberg & Sibelius

05.02.2025 19:00 – 20:00

Standard price 15€ + order fee (from 1,50 € + 0,65 % of the order)

Students/ pensioners/ children 12€ + order fee (from 1,50 € + 0,65 % of the order)

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Hanna Rantala, soprano
Vuokko Ahtila, harp

The concert will feature Sibelius’s songs accompanied by harp and harp solos, i.e. piano works performed on the harp. Soprano Hanna Rantala and harpist Vuokko Ahtila, who have been performing together for a long time, have started to collaborate on Sibelius’ songs. Many of the songs are naturally suited to the harp, even though the accompaniment parts were originally written for piano. Rantala has been successful in a competition bearing the composer’s name. Ahtila, for her part, has performed Sibelius’ music extensively as an orchestral musician. Sibelius did, after all, use the harp in many of his orchestral works. From there, she has developed a desire to explore the composer’s work in a more soloistic role.

Soprano Hanna Rantala is known as a versatile opera singer, a familiar sight both at the Finnish National Opera and the Savonlinna Opera Festival. She has performed over 30 operatic roles in her career, most recently Mona Kummel in Jaakko Kuusisto’s Ice Opera and Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Other notable roles have included Gilda (Verdi’s Rigoletto), Susanna (Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro), Anne Trulove (Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress) and the title role in Janacek’s The Ovela Kitta.

In addition to opera, Hanna has sung as soprano soloist in many major works of church and orchestral music such as Mozart’s Requiem, J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion, Orff’s Carmina Burana and Handel’s Messiah. She is an open-minded concert performer, and her recitals include songs from Hildegard of Bingen to the present day. In November 2021 she performed Schubert’s Winterreise with pianist Kirill Kozlovski.

Rantala is a doctoral student at the DocMus Doctoral School of the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts. She is interested in the female singer’s voice and its many meanings in the practice of vocal performance.

Vuokko Ahtila is a long-standing professional musician, specifically, a harpist. She studied the harp with Han-An Liu, Sophie Schwödiauer and Jana Bouskova in Helsinki, Cologne, Prague and Brussels.

Vuokko has worked as an orchestral musician mainly in Finnish orchestras and as a freelance artist, performing solo concerts, chamber music and accompanying singers. She has made a radio recording for Yle of Handel’s Harp Concerto and performed as a young soloist with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra. Her performance of Fall for solo harp and electronics, streamed live on Yle Areena at the 60th anniversary concert of composer Kaija Saariaho, has received a lot of positive feedback and has attracted thousands of views to date. Vuokko has also played on many orchestral recordings and was featured on a recent Tampere Philharmonic recording of electric guitarist Steve Vai’s music, and got to work on the harp solo in the piece personally with Vai.

Vuokko has received a recognition grant from the Pro Musica Foundation and her studies and work have also been supported by the Wihuri Foundation, the Kordelin, Paulo and Kone Foundations and Taike. Vuokko has immersed herself in the music of Sibelius through a six-month working grant from the Häme Fund of the Cultural Foundation.