Summer Sounds 2026: Opening Concert “Manic Lines”

The premiere of a new piano work by the festival’s composer-in-residence Eric Wubbels opens Suvisoitto 2026. The piece is written for Avanti!’s artistic director Joonas Ahonen. In the second work of the program, Ahonen is joined by no fewer than six clarinetists. Márton Illés’s composition for this unique ensemble features both dazzling colors and relentless intensity. Celebrating his 50th birthday last year, Illés had already, with this 2008 work, offered a compelling answer to the question of who might be the next great Hungarian composer in the lineage of Bartók, Ligeti, and Kurtág.

A significant part of Sarah Nemtsov’s output of over 150 works consists of no fewer than seven operas. From the powerful and direct music of her opera Sacrifice (2016), the composer has created the chamber orchestra suite that serves as the main work of this concert. The German newspaper Die ZEIT wrote that Sacrifice is an opera in which “music becomes space, time, and reality.”

After the intermission, audiences will hear a jaw-dropping duo for cello and piano by Eric Wubbels, performed by cellist Mariel Roberts and the composer himself. The work opens a series running throughout the festival, connecting with the music of Franz Schubert.

In the same year that Gustav Mahler composed his Symphony No. 8 for a thousand performers, Arnold Schoenberg responded by writing his astonishingly fast-moving Chamber Symphony for just 15 musicians. This piece concludes the concert in an intense performance by Emilia Hoving and Avanti!.

The opening concert of Suvisoitto 2026 features three Finnish premieres, one world premiere, and one classic.