Artists
Satu Vänskä
Satu Vänskä was appointed Assistant Leader of the ACO in 2004. Satu was born to a Finnish family in Japan where she took her first violin lessons at the age of three. Her family moved back to Finland in 1989 and she continued her studies with Pertti Sutinen at the Lahti Conservatorium and the Sibelius Academy. From 1997 Satu was a pupil of Ana Chumachenco at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich where she finished her diploma in 2001.
At the age of 11 Satu was selected for the Kuhmo Violin School in Finland, a special institution for talented young violinists where she attended masterclasses with Ilya Grubert, Zinaida Gilels and Pavel Vernikov and had the opportunity to perform at the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival with the Kuhmo Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra.
In 1998 Sinfonia Lahti named her “young soloist of the year”. In 2000 she was a prize winner of the “Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben” and from 2001 she played under the auspices of the Live Music Now Foundation founded by Lord Yehudi Menuhin which gave her the opportunity to perform with musicians like Radu Lupu and Heinrich Schiff.
During her studies in Germany she played with the Munich Philharmonic and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and was a tutor with the Young Bavarian Philharmonic.
Satu has performed as a soloist in Finland, Germany, Spain and Canada and as a chamber musician she has been invited to festivals in Finland and Germany, such as the Tuusulanjärvi Festival (with Pekka Kuusisto and Olli Mustonen) and the Festivo Aschau. She has also recorded chamber music, the most recent being a BIS CD of music by Jean Sibelius.
Satu plays a 1728/9 Stradivarius violin owned by the ACO Instrument Fund.
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