ELINA

Elina Mustonen has built a long and significant career as a harpsichordist, actress and pedagogue. She has performed throughout Europe and the United States with leading ensembles and musicians in both early and contemporary music (e.g. the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Pekka Kuusisto, Ton Koopman, Wieland Kuijken, Laurence Dreyfus and Andres Mustonen). She has also recorded extensively for both Finnish and international labels – including all of J. S. Bach’s suites for harpsichord. Her latest recording, Birds, features early and contemporary harpsichord music inspired by birds.

Elina Mustonen studied acting at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. She has created numerous interdisciplinary productions. One of the earliest is Birds are Known by their Song, based on the novel Baltasar and Blimunda by Nobel Prize–winning author José Saramago and on harpsichord music by Domenico Scarlatti. At the author’s invitation, the performance has toured across Europe.

Her staged solo work Her Infinite Variety – Women of Shakespeare in Word and Music has been performed in Finland as well as in London and on Broadway in New York. In her other productions, Mustonen has highlighted fascinating female destinies: young women composers in Venetian orphanages (Laura Maddalena), the actress Olga Knipper (Signed and Sealed – Olga Knipper, Anton Chekhov and 857 Love Letters). I, Elizabeth – A Monarch in Crisis, which premiered at Teatteri Jurkka, brings to the stage one of history’s most iconic female rulers, Queen Elizabeth I. In spring 2020, Mustonen’s Hamlet monologue was selected from more than 500 entries to be part of the Shakespeare Solos project of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and The Guardian.

Mustonen’s most notable acting roles include Prospero (Shakespeare: The Tempest), Hippolyta and Titania (Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream), the title role in Jussi Kylätasku’s Maaria Blomma, and Ida Aalberg and Aino Sibelius in the Sibelius anniversary productions of the Järvenpää Theatre. In 2023, she appeared as Duke Senior in the “60 Hour Shakespeare” group’s production of As You Like It in England.

On screen, Elina Mustonen has appeared in both films and TV series (including Syke, Onnela, Pohjolan laki and Transport).

She has premiered a significant amount of new music, including works by Eero Hämeenniemi, Harri Vuori, Olli Mustonen and Peter Machadijk, some of which have been dedicated to her. In addition to baroque concertos, her repertoire includes harpsichord concertos by Manuel de Falla, Francis Poulenc and Bohuslav Martinů.

For her achievements as a harpsichordist and pedagogue, Elina Mustonen received the Pro Musica Foundation’s Recognition Award in 2013.

The University of the Arts Helsinki selected her as Alumnus of the Year in 2019.

The Finnish government has granted her the title of Artist Professor.

In 2021–22, Mustonen served as Chair of the National Council for Music.

She has also been awarded the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation’s Jubilee Medal for her work in protecting the Saimaa ringed seal (2013).