Osmo Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra have a history together that needs no introduction. The former principal conductor and main architect of the orchestra’s worldwide renown presents a programme celebrating the versatility of Finnish music. Vänskä’s trademark, Sibelius’s luminous Symphony No. 3 in C major, will be the highlight of the evening.

The Second Violin Concerto by the orchestra’s honorary composer Kalevi Aho is pure Aho; a dramatic arc with fascinating, fleeting details and soaring heights. The spectacular solo part is performed by Tami Pohjola, tipped to be Finland’s next super-violinist.

An outsider in Finnish music history and a contemporary of Sibelius, Ernst Pingoud wrote music in the wrong place at the wrong time. The symphonic poem Prologue, full of French-style riches, is a prime example of a musical language that shocked Finnish audiences.

Banner by Jessie Montgomery, winner of the Grammy for the Best Contemporary Composition of 2024, updates the US National Anthem for the 21st century.  

Spring comes with a swing, but the May Day matinee rests on the firm foundations of steadfast tradition. The threat of sleet and snow recedes, at least in the shelter of the Sibelius Hall, where we hear great music from the lighter side of the classical spectrum: exciting rhythms that are familiar and safe, hits that have stood the test of time.

The Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s May Day matinee is perfect for the occasion: sparkling melodies, pieces that call to mind May Day treats, classics with or without bubbles and chords with a sugar-coated finish. In short, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra wishes you a happy May Day again this year – in all seriousness, but not at all in earnest. The wait for spring is now over.

Mozart’s Requiem was written in circumstances that have remained unclear and in complete silence. Nobody was allowed to breathe a word about it, so the nobleman who commissioned it could present it as his own composition. Mozart avoided tackling the job for several months, and finally took action far too late. Sudden illness and death interrupted the composition halfway through and turned the ominous visions into reality: the fateful Requiem Mass became, as it were, Mozart’s swan song in memory of himself.

Completed by Mozart’s friends, the Requiem is a profound portrayal of death and mercy, a masterpiece that has appealed to listeners for centuries, and a myth that gave the life story of an artistic genius an unassailable place in the annals of music. The Lahti Symphony Orchestra, early music specialist Peter Whelan and a select group of Finnish singers lead the way into the Easter season.

Lightsabers at the ready, the Death Star blueprints have been stolen! The mother of all space operas, Star Wars – A New Hope (1977) introduced audiences to Han Solo, Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, the ultimate evil. Tonight, the mood soars up into space as the silver screen descends on the Sibelius Hall and John Williams’s epic tunes come to life with the power of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stefan Geiger.

The pages of history were irrevocably ripped up in the early years of the last century, both in politics and in music. Claude Debussy, the last composer icon of the so-called ‘Belle Époque’, took the art of composition to a compelling culmination, after which Arnold Schoenberg, the pioneer of new music, set it on a new path. Actress and singer Maria Ylipää interprets the slow madness of the moonstruck clown Pierrot in a timeless cult classic that must be experienced first-hand at least once in a lifetime.

Antonín Dvořák’s tenure as director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York opened up the Czech composer’s mind to new sensations. Fascinated by Afro-American gospel, indigenous melodies and majestic landscapes, the composer blended these ingredients into one of the most beloved orchestral works of all time, his Symphony No. 9, ‘From the New World’.

Sampo Kasurinen’s concerto is specially written for Lilli Maijala, the leading Finnish viola player. The work blurs the boundaries of the reality behind the music in the style of the visual artist Ragnar Kjartanson. Kasurinen’s music is not music as such, but rather images of music – the contradictions between the often beautiful end result that the audience hears and the world behind the curtain.

By contrast, the Fantasia on the Theme of Thomas Tallis by the English national romantic Ralph Vaughan Williams glows with pure, undisguised beauty.

John Williams, the most successful Hollywood composer ever, here makes a detour into the world of concert music. But this tuba concerto, written for the centenary of the Boston Pops Orchestra, has deep roots in the world of adventure films. In the words of Simon Wildman, who gave the premiere, ‘I’ve always thought this concerto was like a long Superman étude. The writing really seems to suggest flying, action punches, and soul-searching at the fortress of solitude.’ The soloist is the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s own superman Harri Lidsle.

The young Johannes Brahms was horrified by the prediction that he would become a great symphonist in the spirit of Beethoven. It took almost a quarter of a century before he dared to realise these hopes – and finally to transcend them. Brahms’s fourth and final symphony is a model of music that stimulates the brain, whose logic provides a satisfying symmetry and feeds an insatiable hunger for overwhelming emotion.

Pekka Kuusisto takes us to the heart of Finnish music on Independence Day.  

Ida Moberg, an early Romantic composer and pioneer of Finnish music who has only gained recognition in recent years, composed an impressive portrait of nature. Rarely heard in concert, the Sunrise Suite radiates a picturesque national romanticism in the bright light of day.

Verdigris was a green pigment used in ancient Greece and also refers to a surface patinated by time. Thus, Lotta Wennäkoski’s Verdigris is a composition based on Jean Sibelius’s En saga, like a reincarnated outer shell. ‘In general the relationship with the old is somewhat blurred’, Wennäkoski has said. ‘Sometimes, as on this occasion, I have borrowed directly and audibly. Hopefully the patina of Verdigris is green, too.’

The inclusion of Sibelius’s Finlandia and Fredrik Pacius’s Maamme, on the other hand, is a tradition that cannot be ignored.

Symphonically together: Polttimo Oy