THE FORCE OF DESTINY

James Hendry, known as an opera conductor, takes the helm of a concert whose inherent drama keeps both the musicians and the audience on the edge of their seats right up until the final chords. 

The concert’s opening work – one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most beloved overtures, from the opera La forza del destino – immediately calls the audience into the presence of forces greater than humanity. Sauli Zinovjev’s song cycle Tarpeeton pyyhitään yli (Erasure) opened the 2025 Helsinki Festival at the Music Centre. Mirkka Rekola’s evocative texts and Zinovjev’s striking music weave an external image of nature together with internal conflict.

‘This is how fate knocks at the door’, said Ludwig van Beethoven about a theme he had received in a dream. Over the course of four years, this motif lingered persistently in his mind and evolved into the greatest symphony of all time, the so-called ‘Fate’ Symphony. Ultimately, the work grew into a phenomenon greater than the sum of its parts – a cross-generational model for composers and a musical cornerstone that became the springboard for the development of Western classical music.