Heartily welcome to our home pages.
Welcome dear friends, the Sibelius in Korpo festival takes place this summer for the twenty-fourth time, between 18th and 20th of July, in this beautiful sunny archipelago environment. The theme for this summer’s festival will be “Jean Sibelius 160.", ie we are celebrating 160 years since his birth. This summer in total we will have four concerts, three in the Korpo Manor and one in the Korpo Church.
We are happy again to be able to wish welcome to Korpo a group of renowned musicians – some of them are visiting Korpo for the first time.
I wish all of you in the audience enjoyable, personal experiences with the music of Jean Sibelius in the beautiful Korpo Manor, and in the Korpo church.
Petri Kirkkomäki
Executive Director, baritone
Sibelius in Korpo festival
Folke Gräsbeck: Artistic Director’s Greeting
Sibelius in Korpo XXIV 18th to 20th July 2025
“Sibelius 160”
Dear Festival Visitors,
welcome to the 24. Edition of the Sibelius in Korpo Festival 18–20.7 2025! We have arranged the festival annually since the start in 2002. We offer inspired music making during three days, a pattern developed already during many years. Following some details from the programmes:
Friday 18th July at 6pm and 8pm at Korpo Manor there are ’Twilight Concerts’ with two eminent musicians, the violinist Kaisa Porra and the pianist Ruusamari Teppo. They are about the same age, but they represent different generations: Teppo is a daughter’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter of Sibelius, whereas Porra (sister of Lauri Porra) is ‘only’ a daughter’s daughter’s daughter. Kaisa Porra has in her possession Sibelius’s first violin, a Serafino. During the first half of the concert they are going to perform Sibelius’s early Sonata in A minor (1884) and Andante grazioso (1884–85), both of which Sibelius composed using this Serafino violin!
Saturday 19th July at 4pm at Korpo Church (15th Century), we have a major cantata concert – Sibelius’s Promotion Cantata 1897 in 14 movements is performed by the Music House Choir (Helsinki), conducted by Eleriin Müüripeal. The baritone Petri Kirkkomäki is the general manager of the Sibelius Festival in Korpo as well as the chairman of the Music House Choir, and he is going to perform the cantata solos together with sopranos Marjut Häkkinen and Hanna Tamminen, and the baritone Antti Kähönen. Within the realm of the Helsinki University, knowledge and enlightment are virtues highly praised in the cantata text. The movements 1, 3, 5 and 13 are optimistic, grand style student marches.
Sunday 20th July at noon (12.00), Ceremony at the Sibelius Monument, including flowers, music, speeches. Sibelius’s duet Tanken (‘The Thought’) is going to be performed. It was originally composed by Sibelius to his painter brother-in-law Eero Järnefelt, who celebrated silver anniversary wedding day in 1915.
Sunday 20th July at 3pm, concluding concert at Korpo Manor. Singers from the Music House Choir are going to perform favourite songs by Sibelius, like Demanten på marssnön, Lastu lainehilla, Var det en dröm? och Norden. The seldom heard Eight Songs, Op. 61, are performed completely. This opus collection is avoided by many singers because of tricky, half-modern structures. However, this impression of dissonances is getting soothed out in the concluding, gentle Vårtagen (‘The Spell of Springtide’), No. 8.
Folke Gräsbeck
Artistic Director
Sibelius in Korpo festival
