Hello!

Conductors always lead busy lives, but these days it seems my schedule is busier than ever.  I am in the middle of a series of concerts for our young audiences, made more taxing to a bout of ‘flu that has attacked me recently.  It took a lot of effort to rehearse a couple of mornings ago with a high temperature, and that is when I thought how great it would be to have an assistant!

Young persons concerts are always a lot of fun.  The atmosphere in the hall is different, and this is transferred to the musicians and the music seems somewhat lighter, more informal.  Music making becomes more flexible and we can improvise more.  And the variety of the program makes it very exciting!  Rimsky-Korsakov, Copland, Mozart and Karelia’s own Rautio is very colourful.  That is exactly what we will try to show to our young listeners today.

Tomorrow is straight into Brahms’s Piano Quartet in g minor (arr Schoenberg) and Berg’s Piano Sonata (arr Hoffman). Plunging into late German romanticism welded by the Second Viennese School composers.  Delicious, luscious describes it best!  Kazakhstan for me is the next stop where I will be conducting a Gala concert celebrating the opening of the Winter Asian Games.  A young democratic nation is becoming a serious player on the world stage and it is a wonderful sign that this country uses music as a means of communication.  The world is in an exciting, turbulent stage at the moment – Egypt is in its 6th day of independence movement, Tunisia rid itself of its dictatorship not long ago.  Let’s hope for a peaceful resolution to the Egypt event, and I am sure music will soon be heard in Africa’s leading nation.

We will actually be hearing some African drum cell melodies in the concert today!