The online content produced by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra during the coronavirus pandemic has already reached about 800,000 views. In addition, its two concert broadcasts on YLE (the Finnish Broadcasting Company) have reached a total of some 100,000 listeners. Following the interruption of the orchestra’s normal concert activities by the coronavirus pandemic, online concerts and other content have become a key part of the orchestra’s alternative offering.

The largest single audience for the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s online productions during the spring was for Sibelius’s Finlandia, released in April 2020, in which the individual players recorded their parts at home on their mobile phones. By mid-January 2021, this Finlandia recording, published on various social media platforms, had amassed a total of more than 365,000 views in two versions (one together with the Laulupuu Choir).

The ‘Gaudeamus igitur’ recording, filmed at the Lahti Lyceum and released in connection with the school graduation ceremony, has amassed more than 29,000 views, ‘Midsummer Dances’ has reached nearly 17,000, ‘May Day Matinée’ nearly 13,000 and the ‘Lighter Music Home Concert’ more than 9,000. The Independence Day concert has reached more than 7,000 views, and the live concert broadcast on Radio Voima was heard by around 3,000 people.

In addition to concerts and other music performances, we have made available (for example) video material about caring for musical instruments and a six-part series, ‘Sibelius in Words’, where the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s musicians discuss Sibelius’s symphonies, as well as musical postcards from Lahti and the series ‘Children Ask – the Orchestra Answers’. As well as appearing on its own channels, the orchestra’s material has been published by our partner organizations, for instance Etelä-Suomen Sanomat and the music magazine Rondo. Classiclive.com also offers concert recordings made by the orchestra at the Sibelius Hall.

The Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s most successful video to date is ‘Soprano’s Surprise’, which has reached nearly 1.4 million viewers on YouTube. In all, the orchestra’s videos have been viewed on YouTube more than two and a half million times.