Naantali Music Festival

Naantali Music Festival, founded in 1980 by cellist Arto Noras with backing from the City of Naantali, is recognized as the most esteemed chamber music festival in the Nordic countries. Held in the small coastal town near Turku, it has staged nearly a thousand concerts across four decades under Noras's leadership before violinist Elina Vahala succeeded him as artistic director in 2022.

Cellist and professor Arto Noras, together with strong backing from the City of Naantali, organized the first Naantali Music Festival in 1980, opening with a program of Mozart, Vivaldi, and Brahms performed in Naantali Church, and the festival has remained devoted specifically to chamber music from that first concert onward rather than broadening into a general classical or multi-genre program.