Classical music at Enontekiö

Hetta Music Days is the northernmost classical music festival in the European Union in the middle of the fells at Enontekiö, Lapland. This year, Music Days will be organized for the 55th time.

Hetta Music Days – Overview of Hetta Music Days 2024

Hetta Music Days is the northernmost Finnish music festival, organized yearly during the Easter week.

The 2024 theme will be Sámi Meets Classic. It will bring the tradition of the oldest European indigenous people, the Sámi, into classical music context. Our festival has established working pairs, consisting of a Sámi musician and a classical music composer, to create together new songs following the old yoik tradition. Unlike the original yoik which is sung solo, these new yoiks are accompanied by classical acoustic instruments.

The classical program will start on Thursday, March 28 (2024) at Enontekiö church with Lapland Chamber Orchestra, conducted by John Storgårds. The biggest work of the concert is Pelléas and Mélisande, an astonishingly romantic work of the German pioneer of contemporary music, Arnold Schönberg. Their soloist is a rising star, the Swedish Sámi singer Katarina Barruk, who ”delivers a fierce, yet deeply down-to-earth, mix of pop music, traditional yoik and improvisational elements, that is unlike anything else. Barruk has toured through Europe in front of steadily growing audiences.”

The first co-composition, written by the Sámi poet Niillas Holmberg and the Turkish-Finnish classical composer Aslihan Sarikoski, will be premiered on Good Friday and repeated at Kautokeino on Saturday afternoon. On Saturday and Easter Sunday evenings, the master of traditional yoik, Ulla Pirttijärvi, will first perform two new yoiks, which she has composed together with a Swedish and a Finnish classical composer, Hans Lennart Jonsäll, and Tuomas Kettunen.

She will be accompanied by Lapland Chamber Orchestra musicians, who will also perform beloved classical and romantic chamber music by Mozart, Schumann, and Shostakovich, among others, in these concerts.

 

Hetta Music Days program

Hetta Music Days will treat friends of classical music during Easter at Enontekiö.

 Look at the program

Classical music and the peace of nature
25.–31.3.2024

In cooperation

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