Lahti Sibelius Festival 2025–27

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Encounters - Lahti cover image 2025

The Lahti International Sibelius Festival’s artistic director, conductor Hannu Lintu, is making a historic change right at the start of his tenure. In the years to come, the Sibelius Festival programme will include music by other composers alongside that of the composer after whom it is named. Lintu has planned a three-festival package that will bring world-famous musicians to Lahti’s Sibelius Hall.

‘I am particularly excited about the opportunity to transform the programme of the Sibelius Festival’, said conductor Hannu Lintu when his appointment as artistic partner of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the International Sibelius Festival was announced. Lintu is known as a skilled programme planner and under his leadership the Sibelius Festival is now undergoing a historic redesign.

A major music festival devoted to the music of just one composer was a bold idea in its time, and one that has been pursued rigorously for 25 years. It is fairly safe to say that there is no other orchestra in the world that has performed Sibelius’s music as comprehensively as the Lahti Symphony Orchestra. There have nevertheless been occasional suggestions over the years that the programme might be amended.

Although the concept that has worked for a quarter of a century is now being overhauled, Sibelius remains at the heart of the festival and of its programmes. ‘I have considered it a special honour to plan the Sibelius Festival and have sought to keep the focus of the programme on the master composer’s output,’ says Hannu Lintu, recalling that Sibelius was well aware of the stylistic turbulence of the early 20th century. ‘We know that as a young man he admired Tchaikovsky, Liszt and Wagner. His circle of friends included some of the most important international musicians of the era.’ Through the Sibelius Festival, Lintu and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra want to demonstrate what these affiliations mean in practice.

A three-festival package 2025–27

Hannu Lintu has planned the next three Sibelius Festivals as a single entity. At all the orchestral concerts at the 2025–27 Sibelius Festivals he will conduct the Lahti Symphony Orchestra. The revamped festival will bring several world-renowned stars to Lahti for the first time, and the Sibelius Hall will welcome leading Finnish and international soloists.

The first composer to join Jean Sibelius in the upcoming festival programmes is Gustav Mahler who, like Sibelius, was inspired by folk poetry. ‘At the turn of the 1880s–1890s, one of them based his production on the nature-inspired poems of Des Knaben Wunderhorn and the other on the verses of the Kalevala.’

The opening work of this year’s Sibelius Festival is Mahler’s symphonic poem Todtenfeier (1888). The second half of the first concert will be Sibelius’s Kullervo (1882), with soprano Johanna Rusanen and baritone Davóne Tines as soloists, and the YL Male Voice Choir.

Similarities between the Kalevala and a medieval German heroic epic, the Nibelungenlied, are explored in a concert featuring Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen and the first act of Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre, with soprano Miina-Liisa Värelä, tenor Klaus Florian Vogt and bass Ain Anger as soloists. In the closing concert of this year’s festival, soprano Karita Mattila will sing orchestral songs by Edvard Grieg and Sibelius.

Sibelius, Grieg and Tchaikovsky are the composers featured in the chamber concerts that complement the orchestral performances. These chamber concerts will feature pianist Ossi Tanner and the ILOA Quartet. This year, all the concerts will take place in the magnificent main auditorium of the Sibelius Hall, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

More composers for 2026–27

The 2026 festival will include works by Sibelius and by his contemporaries Richard Strauss, Ferruccio Busoni and Sergei Rachmaninov. Guest soloists include violinist Inmo Yang and pianist Kirill Gerstein.

In 2027, Sibelius will be joined by Edward Elgar and Igor Stravinsky, as well as the Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. The final concert of the three festivals planned by Hannu Lintu, in September 2027, will be devoted to the modernism of Jean Sibelius and the way his music looks towards the future. Works by Sibelius will be paired with pieces by Magnus Lindberg, Kaija Saariaho and Outi Tarkiainen.

Conductor Hannu Lintu has chosen Pohjola’s Daughter as the opening work for the 2027 Sibelius Festival, a piece that he says represents a point of demarcation for Sibelius. ‘It is a glorious culmination of the national romantic period, but simultaneously represents the new, universal Sibelius.’

Ticket sales for this year’s Sibelius Festival will begin at Lippu.fi on 17 January 2025. 2026 festival tickets will be available during this year’s festival and 2027 tickets will be sale during the 2026 festival. For information on Sibelius One’s group booking, click here.

Dates

26th International Sibelius Festival 28.–30.8.2025
27th International Sibelius Festival 27.–29.8.2026
28th International Sibelius Festival 2.–4.9.2027

Source: Lahti Symphony Orchestra Press Release

Sibelius One Magazine – January 2025: coming soon

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Sibelius One Magazine January 2025 front cover

The January 2025 issue of Sibelius One’s magazine is now in the final stages of preparation.
Articles planned for this issue:

  • ‘I am ready to do everything for the Fatherland.’ – Jean Sibelius as a representative of Finnish patriotic loyalty: the years up to 1910  ·  Veijo Murtomäki
  • Merikanto and Sibelius  ·  Andrew Barnett  
  • The Maiden in Japan  ·  The Sibelius Society of Japan performs ‘Jungfrun i tornet’
  • The Sibelius Festival in Lahti 2024 – Brief Confessions of a Personal Pilgrimage  ·  Kornel Kossuth
  • Snippets from a Sibelius Novel  ·  A work in progress by Aleksanteri Kovalainen

Subscribers will be sent their copies of  the magazine as soon as it arrives from the printers. For more information, or to add the magazine to your subscrciption, please click here.

Scaramouche: A Comparative Production History (Kurki/Toepfer)

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scaramouche-kurki-toepfer-cover-image
Cover photo: Alexander Saxelin as Scaramouche and Eva Hemming as Blondelaine in Scaramouche, directed by Maggie Gripenberg, Helsinki, 1946. Photo: Tenhovaara Studio; Finnish National Ballet

Sibelius’s ‘Scaramouche’: A Comparative Production History of a Tragic Pantomime, 1913–1977

This book, a collaborative effort between Karl Toepfer and Finnish scholar Eija Kurki, describes the historical context for the Scaramouche tragic pantomime created by Poul Knudsen and Jean Sibelius in 1913. The pantomime had numerous productions in various European countries between 1922 and 1977, and the book examines all of them according to all available evidence. The text explains the historical and cultural significance of the pantomime and how it uniquely explores a dark and complex intersection of female sexuality, marriage, and class control of erotic desire. The authors examine productions of Scaramouche from the premiere production in Copenhagen in 1922 to the last major production in Karl-Marx-Stadt, East Germany in 1977, including productions in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Latvia, France, Germany (1927) and Denmark (1950).

The comparative approach to production history, accompanied by many illustrations, allows the reader to see Scaramouche as more than a historical object; it is a historical agent, causing a remarkable array of actions and responses to its themes and strange perspective on sexuality rather than a unifying feeling across languages and eras. The book is innovative in its unprecedented international scope relative to theatrical production history. Few, if any, production histories compare evidence from so many different languages and decades. The reader encounters a huge number of ‘voices’ responding to Scaramouche in media reviews, memoirs and other sources, and therefore understands how productions of the pantomime ‘awakened an avalanche of language’ up to 1977, while since then, though scholars now claim it to be one of Sibelius’s major achievements, it has disappeared entirely from the stage for mysterious reasons that the book attempts to identify.

170 pages, over 100 illustrations.

Click here for Karl Toepfer’s website where you can download the book free of charge.

Sibelius & Saraste

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Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra (Photo: © Sakari Viika)

The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra under the leadership of its chief conductor and artistic director Jukka-Pekka Saraste has launched the Sibelius & Saraste series, during which all of Jean Sibelius’s symphonies will be recorded as high-quality multi-camera productions. The series will have its international premiere in November on Deutsche Grammophon’s Stage+ streaming service.

The series begins with Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5, which will be performed at the orchestra’s concert at the Helsinki Music Centre on 7 November and broadcast worldwide live on the Stage+ streaming service. The concert can also be viewed on the ARTE Concert video service. In addition to Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, the  programme includes Lotta Wennäkoski’s Verdigris and Sergei Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Nelson Goerner as soloist.

Originally founded in 1882, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra premiered the majority of Sibelius’s orchestral works, often conducted by the composer himself. The orchestra’s chief conductor and artistic director Jukka-Pekka Saraste sees the recording of Sibelius’s symphonies as a natural continuation of the orchestra’s and the composer’s journey together: ‘Sibelius & Saraste is a complete series that aims to achieve the atmosphere of a live concert experience while relating the story of Sibelius’s orchestra to a wide international music audience.’

It has been more than 20 years already since the HPO’s last complete recording of Sibelius’s symphonies. Although more than 60 recordings of the composer’s symphonies have been made, there are only a few high-quality film recordings of his entire symphonic output.

The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra is the first Finnish symphony orchestra to be broadcasted on the Stage+ streaming service. The classical music streaming service currently offers concerts by the Cleveland Orchestra and Concertgebouworkest. 

Jukka-Pekka Saraste
Jukka-Pekka Saraste (Photo: © Sakari Röyskö)

All of Sibelius’s symphonies will be performed in concert by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste and will be recorded as international multi-camera productions during the years 2023–25. The recorded symphonies will be available for viewing at a later date.

2025 will mark the 160th anniversary of the birth of Jean Sibelius. To celebrate the anniversary, plans are for the Sibelius & Saraste series to be viewable in its entirety in 2025.

Information source: Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra

Adès conducts Sibelius, 21 November 2024

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Thomas Adès

Thomas  Adès (photo: Hallé website)

Thomas Adès will conduct Sibelius’s Fifth and Seventh Symphonies with the Hallé at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester on Thursday 21 November 2024 at 7.30pm.

Two compositions by Adès are also on the programme: Aquifer, brimming with fluid motifs and rhythms that expand and withdraw as the water would in its namesake geological structure, and Air (Homage to Sibelius), a transformative work first premiered earlier this year. The concert also includes Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Deux Sérénades, a delicately poignant work in two movements. Both Air (Homage to Sibelius) and Rautavaara’a Deux Sérénades feature the acclaimed violinist Stephen Waarts.

Thomas Adès has said of Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony: ‘The music reached a hand inside me and rinsed my nervous system, restored my strength, set me free from that time and place. I think the greatest gift of art is free to us from time and place.’

Programme
Sibelius Symphony No. 7
Rautavaara Deux Sérénades
Adès Aquifer
Adès Air (Homage to Sibelius)
Sibelius Symphony No. 5
Pre-concert- talk at 6.30pm in the auditorium: string players from the Hallé and violinist Stephen Waarts discuss the evening’s programme.

Ticket prices: £17 to £50. Concessions and discounts available
Booking: click here

Leif Segerstam 1944–2024

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Leif Segerstam, 2015
Leif Segerstam with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
in Lahti in 2015 (photo: © Lahti Symphony Orchestra / Juha Tanhua)

The conductor and composer Leif Segerstam has died at the age of 80.

Born in Vaasa, Finland, on 2 March 1944, Segerstam was one of the most versatile musical talents in the Nordic countries. He enjoyed a distinguished and colourful career since 1962, when he made his debut as a violinist. His first conducting appearance came the following year, when he also gained his conducting diploma from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He also studied the violin, piano and composition Sibelius Academy, and continued his education at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

Segerstam was chief conductor of ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1975 until 1983, and principal conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra from 1995 until 2007, later becoming its chief conductor emeritus. He was also principal conductor of the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm and appeared at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in Finland. He held positions with numerous other orchestras, including the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and  guest-conducted all over the world. From the autumn of 1997 until the spring of 2013 he was professor of orchestra conducting at the Sibelius Academy. The Nordic Music Committee (NOMUS) awarded Segerstam the 1999 Nordic Council Music Prize, and in 2004 he was awarded the annual Finnish State Prize for Music.

His music-making was sometimes controversial but was distinguished by a fiercely sharp intellect coupled with boundless creativity. In an interview with Bruce Duffie in Chicago, he emphasized that the purpose of music is ‘communication’; ‘music is always reborn when it is relived in the performing moment’.

Leif Segerstam, 1967
The young Leif Segerstam (1967) (Photo: Lauri Kautia. CC BY 4.0)

Segerstam was a powerful interpreter not only of composers such as Mahler and Allan Pettersson but also of Sibelius. He  had an instinctive and profound understanding of Sibelius’s sound world, producing performances that were both monumental and full of inner life. His Sibelius discography was vast and wide-ranging, including not only two complete cycles of symphonies (Danish National Symphony Orchestra / Chandos and Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra / Ondine) but also a series of rare works and theatre music (Turku Philharmonic Orchestra / Naxos) and much more.

He displayed exceptional creativity as a composer throughout his musical career. He wrote more than 370 symphonies, well as concertos and chamber and vocal music.

Leif Segerstam passed away on 9 October 2024.