Stories by

"I knew Järnefelt for a fine composer and was looking forward to my encounter with this score, but I was taken aback by the sheer quality of the music."

"Jean Dubé’s virtues here are that he gives the music time to speak and that he reproduces its textures with commendable clarity, to which the recorded sound does full justice."

"Kujala’s new Alba recording includes an excellent and fascinating collection of works from five Finnish composers."

"Haapanen typically deconstructs the text by rearranging its constituents, thus creating mixed feelings of alienation and vulnerable immediacy."

A pioneer of Finnish violin repertoire and a virtuoso of the school of Joseph Joachim – handsome epithets that apply to composer and violinist Agnes Tschetschulin (1859–1942). She was the first star student of the Helsinki Music Institute (now the Sibelius Academy) and went on to create a prominent international career.

Music has long been important in increasing international awareness about the Sámi. Their yoik singing has come to represent an often forgotten people on the edge of Europe. Singer and songwriter Hildá Länsman represents the youngest generation forging an identity between tradition and modernity.

Conductor, electronic musician, singer, clarinettist and producer Taavi Oramo is known as a highly diverse and open-minded musician. Though increasingly performing as a conductor, he is keen to keep up his multiple other roles too: the various aspects of music-making that he is involved in are mutually supportive.

“Could a certain distance from Western symphonic thought have contributed to the surprising qualities of the performances I heard in China?” Andrew Mellor reviews performances of Sibelius’s Symphonies Nos 2 and 5 in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

"I am currently exploring ways of ensuring the audibility of a specific instrument in orchestral texture before rehearsals even begin." This column is part of the series "On my music and beyond", where composers and other music makers write about their music.