Violinist Erikka Maalismaa, 44, has died

A violinist Erikka Maalismaa died on Thursday, December 19 in Helsinki of a rapidly progressing illness. Maalismaa was 44 years old, born on August 20, 1980.

Maalismaa worked in the Helsinki City Orchestra from 2006 to 2016, most of that time as second concertmaster. After this, he went freelance. Maalismaa was a familiar sight at festivals and open air concert series concerts, which he himself was actively organizing.

He was working often by other top musicians in the free field, such as a pianist by Emil Holmström and a cellist Markus Hohdin with. Maalismaa, for example, founded the Ristiveto festival with them.

Maalismaa and Holmström won the 2019 classical music Emma award with their recording Robert Schumannin of violin sonatas.

Holmström and guitarist Petri Kumelan with Maalismaa organized the Klassinen Hietsu concert series, which was the last of this autumn’s concert season. The organizers felt that the continuation of the concert series was impossible due to the weakness of the financial base and cuts in cultural appropriations.

Maalismaa was no longer able to participate in the last concert of Klassisen Hietsu in Helsinki, organized on Sunday, December 15.

Erika Maalismaa studied at the Oulu Conservatory, the Sibelius Academy, the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and the Edsberg Music Institute in Stockholm. He was a member of the chamber orchestra Avanti and the Avanti Quartet. He also interpreted a lot of music by Finnish composers.

In November 2019, for example, he played as a soloist Brother Kujalan Auseil-in the first performance of the violin concerto, at his old job as soloist of the Helsinki City Orchestra.

“Maalismaa played the extremely difficult, restlessly moving solo part sovereignly, as if in a trance as the main character of a story haunted by restless images”, HS’s music critic Jukka Isopuro wrote On the interpretation of Maalismaa.