Before the great October Revolution in 1917, the cultural contacts between Helsinki and St. Petersburg were amazingly strong and lively. St. Petersburg was the political and,...

The founding of the city of St. Petersburg in 1703 meant the birth of a new orientation, a source of innovative ideas and of growth potential...

The Russian-born composer Ernest Pingoud (1887–1942) emigrated to Finland to escape the revolution in 1918 and spent most of his working life there. He became one...

Finnish cinema is enjoying a major boom: the higher degree of professionalism and the growing rate of new releases are paying dividends in bigger box-office figures....

Finnish arts policy attracts attention and interest internationally because of its remarkable results. Per capita, Finland has produced an astounding number of world-class conductors, composers and...

Finland prides itself on being an exemplary country as regards its music education. Foreigners sigh with envy on hearing about our unique music institute system covering...

The Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen is equally at home in a Romantic concerto as in music of the Baroque or the present day. When this article...

In a book entitled Mielen maisemat ja musiikki (Landscapes of the Mind and Music) Kari Kurkela addresses the problems encountered by the child in learning to...

"You are born with a dramatic pulse, with dramatic thinking, and that's that. I've written now about two-thirds, so I call it a marathon," says composer...

The following article was published in an anthology of Ernest Pingoud’s writings collectively entitled “The Progress of Art” (Taiteen edistys), edited by Kalevi Aho in 1995....

Paavo Berglund, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Osmo Vänskä, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Simon Rattle, and Neeme Järvi are today's great Sibelius conductors, carrying on a tradition...