"Vähälä, who has performed with the orchestra before, gave a fine performance of the Mozart concerto, with the orchestra closely attuned to her. Gothoni's and Vahala's was an elegant, modern rendering, and clean technique and keen musicianship marked her playing."
(Mozart: Violin concerto No.5)
Seattle Post Intelligencer

"Vähälä was clearly the evening's star and the Schnittke her showpiece. Both violinist and pianist threw themselves into the sonata...Vähälä offering a vividly athletic performance that managed to appear untamed but was, in fact, perfectly in control.
(Schnittke: Quasi una sonata)
Los Angeles Times

"Her control of phrasing, and especially the ends of phrases provided evidence of a thoughtful musician who has all the technical accomplishment and confidence she needs to project her thoughts. Her intonation is sure and her tone fine, perfectly formed.

In her highly musical performance of the Brahms’s D minor sonata her delicacy of sound and the rhythm in the third movement was marvelous, as was the drive in the finale. She breathed each movement, and even the whole sonata, as one."
New York Times

"This concert was of exeptional quality. Elina Vähälä’s playing is expressive, sensitive and tempestuous...intense and smooth sound, impeccable intonation, a lively bow arm, all with an easy mastery, a clarity of sonority when each note bursts with life and each phrase leads to the next.

Fiery temperament, brilliant and pure playing - in a recital like this one feels that there is a guaranteed future for music."
Le Droit, Ottawa

"Vähälä, a Grace Kelly look-alike who cut an exceedingly glamorous figure on the stage, took over as soloist for two Beethoven Romances for Violin and Orchestra. She is a patrician, confident player with a big, smooth tone that poured out the long-lined melodies with true beauty. "
The Seattle Times

"There was a high level of energy, a careful but passionate attention to detail and a high sense of music’s technical and emotional structure.
In Schubert’s Duo for violin and piano one was constantly struck with the suppleness and sheer beauty of the violin sound."
Ottawa Citizen

"Impeccable accuracy, a sound that carries, radient and luminous; this young woman reveals herself to be a top level soloist whose ease and presence have no cause to envy the other rising young notables of violin."
Le Monde

"...an utterly brilliant interpretation of the work."
[Schnittke: Concerto Grosso #1 with violinist Katrin Scholtz]
Westdeutche Allgemeine Zeitung

"Her playing was blinding, answering to all the demands of the music in power, virtuosity and soft melancholy. A pure and poetic feeling in the violin tone and fiery involvement in the interpretation. Yes, it was absolutely brilliant..."
[Kalevi Aho: Violin Concerto]
Svenska Dagbladet, Stockholm

"Vähälä has almost a viola depth and richness to her violin sound. Her Beethoven was sensitive, musical and appropriately classical in style."
The Seattle Post


 

First prize winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York, Elina Vähälä plays the Stradivarius violin (from 1678) generously loaned by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. She has performed with orchestras such as the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra, Danish Radio Sinfonietta, the Northwest Chamber orchestra in Seattle and with the legendary English Chamber Orchestra in several occasions, in London, Finland, Greece, Turkey and South Africa. She has worked among others with conductors Giordano Bellincampi, Ralf Gothoni, Juha Kangas, Sakari Oramo, John Storgårds, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Joseph Swensen and Osmo Vänskä.

Elina Vähälä has been a guest artist at several festivals in Finland, Europe, the US, Asia and Africa; among them the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, Helsinki Festival, Naantali, Turku, Oulu and Korsholm music festivals, La Roque d’Antheron festival and Pablo Casals festivals in Prades and Paris, Spoleto USA, El Paso and Gilmore festivals, the Forbidden City Music Festival in Beijing and the International Classical Music Festival in South Africa.

In 1999 Ms. Vähälä gave her critically acclaimed New York recital debut. She has also appeared in chamber concerts at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall following which she performed for the first time in the series of the Boston Chamber Music Society.

Born in the United States and raised in Finland, violinist Elina Vähälä made her concerto debut at the age of 12 with the Sinfonia Lahti. In 1993- 1994 she was chosen to carry the title "the Young Master Soloist" of the Sinfonia Lahti, and since then Vähälä has performed regularly with this Gramophone Award winning orchestra. She also performed with other major orchestras around her home country; the Helsinki, Turku and Tampere Philharmonic orchestras, the Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Ostrobotnian Chamber Orchestra and the Virtuosi di Kuhmo chamber orchestra.

"Some scholars have argued that Mendelssohn’s music is an early example of neoclassicism and that trying to inject it with intensely emotive Romanticism only mars it. That seemed to be at the heart of what Vähälä played. She consistently opted for a measured approach, always thoughtful, always probing. The first movement was nearly transparent in texture yet still painted with gorgeous tonal colors...The finale had the same clarity, but with ample wattage added to the playing when needed. Indeed Vahala kept adding heat to her playing toward the end drawing some astonishing powerful sounds from her 1678 Stradivarius. (Mendelssohn Concerto) The Charleston Gazette

"Already the powerful first measures of the Brahms D major concerto and the firm, dramatic grip of the soloist made the listener to expect some totally new creative interpretation of the familiar concerto, and one was not let down. Elina Vähälä conjured up of her Stradivari-violin the most beautiful singing line, whispering pianissimos and full-bodied forte, probably the way that would have satisfied Brahms as well. I was expecting with certain interest the interpretation of the third movement, the final. "FIRE AND FLASH"! Elina Vähälä's dramatic and brilliant insight sounded pure, technically flawless without comparison.
We got to hear well analyzed and lively Brahms. It felt that the beautiful-toned Stradivari transformed to a part of a musical landscape."
Ostrobotnian, Vasa, Finland

"Vähälä invested great care in details of color, inflection and dynamics, giving each note and phrase a weight and shape specific to its place in the whole. That specificity was especially effective in the Debussy, but also in the Stravinsky, whose neoclassicism is often rendered more generically. Vähälä's impeccable aim gave Copland's triadic melodic intervals a chiseled character." [Tuesday Musical Club of San Antonio] www.IncidentLight.com