During the last three decades of his life, Sibelius was locked in a desperate struggle with the forces of creation, the expectations of those around him...

Finnish composers got together to form a society immediately after the war, in 1945. The following is a resume of the history of the first half...

Finland has taken the potato from Peru — potato in Finnish is peruna, by the way — and the tango from Argentina. Both these South American...

”Being a composer in Finland" means above all capturing the intellectual mood, and this also involves an understanding of the country's own traditions."

In 1994 FMQ addressed this question to two very significant, and oh so very different Finnish composer personalities, Paavo Heininen and Einojuhani Rautavaara. Tapani Länsiö, himself...

“The world's best bass player”. Pekka Pohjola had this dinned into him all through the seventies: he was the Jaco Pastorius of the North, a man...

When the biography of Oskar Merikanto was published in 1950, it was subtitled “A household name in Finland”. And although romanticising biographies were all the vogue...

This year [1992] Finland becomes 75. Our years of independence are being celebrated with exhibitions, speeches and commemorative gold coins. The country has changed in many...

Barely having finished Joy, the last part of his orchestral trilogy to which his earlier works Kinetics and Marea also belong, and also the Piano Concerto,...