FMQ 3-4/2014

"In diving into the world of microtones, I tried to make musicality my priority, listening as carefully and acutely as possible, in a natural relationship with other elements of music. A whole new world of harmony unfolded before me!"

"Traditional, academic criticism is giving way to a more collective and democratic form of criticism: we are today perhaps more interested than ever to learn what other people think of their musical experiences and how they choose to express their thoughts."

Laulu', a film directed by Selma Vilhunen, portrays the encounter of people, their life stories, joys and sorrows in the heartland of runo singing.

"These days Esa-Pekka Salonen is a superstar who spends seven months of each year composing and the rest conducting some of the world’s finest orchestras. He has seen the music scene in Finland change fundamentally since the founding of the FMQ."

The most prolific and most popular opera librettist in Finland today is a writer, poet and musician from Peru: Maritza Núñez. The opera Frida y Diego by Kalevi Aho, commissioned by the Sibelius Academy, is to be premiered at the Helsinki Musiikkitalo in October 2014.

"Music has the ability to prompt such a profound emotional sensation that words fail to describe it. Yet it also has the ability to prompt in us a desire to write about it – above all, paradoxically, in cases where the music seems the furthest removed from the realm of linguistic expression."

"Everything would seem to have been simpler 30 years ago when the FMQ was launched. No one had ever even dreamt of an octopus-like internet, and social media was unknown; the printed word was solemn and reliable, and the mainstream media was in a sovereign position to decide what was in the news and what was not. Its authority was absolute: the editorial boards even determined which readers’ comments they would publish and which they would not."