This year’s Kuhmo Chamber Music festival attracted audiences of more than 36,000.
Working under the theme 20th Century Masters, the Finnish event took place from 14-27 July and saw 12 of 71 concerts sold out.
Works by Kaija Saariaho, Magnus Lindberg, Krzysztof Penderecki and Sofia Gubaidulina were staged.
Performers included Latvian violinist and conductor Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica ensemble.
Next year’s festival will take Seven Cities and Seven Arts as its theme.
Artistic director Vladimir Mendelssohn said the event will travel across seven cities, exploring seven arts. The cities are Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Paris, London, New York and Berlin.
Whole days will be devoted to different genres of the arts, with days set aside for cinema, theatre, dance, painting and literature. And one of the arts will be gastronomy.
Mendelssohn said: ‘The most challenging of the arts is, of course, music, because in any case there will be music every day. Another challenging day will be painting, and it will mean a departure from the normal run of the festival. We also have plans for theatre and flamenco and Kalevala.’
