Perttu Haapanen

"Haapanen writes for the orchestra as for a collective of virtuosi and the FRSO do not let him down in this scintillating performance."

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

We have come a long way from the days when audiences at concerts of contemporary music consisted of a tiny handful of dedicated professionals. This was the inevitable conclusion when looking at the size and structure of audiences at this year’s Musica nova Helsinki festival. There were several concerts where people actually had to be turned away, and the audience base ranged far beyond the diehard contemporary music enthusiasts.

"Foreigners like me once had the idea that Finland was a difficult country in which to be a composer; so strong was Sibelius’s legacy and so dominant those famous names who succeeded him. But that idea now seems outdated," writes Andrew Mellor in his column on the Day of Finnish Music.