Tapiola Sinfonietta dancing with Pekka Kuusisto at the Helsinki Music Centre

If you move in academic, corporate or philanthropic circles, you will certainly have attended speeches and lectures about leadership, or come across relevant literature about it. Well, if you were in the Helsinki Music Center’s Concert Hall at 5pm last Saturday, you’d be sure that attending the previous week’s rehearsals would have saved you the need for leadership books and conferences.

The Helsinki Philharmonic’s winter visit to Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie offers a vivid portrait of Finnish musical identity at its most compelling.

An eclectic programme including evocative Sámi joiks from and powerful Shostakovich performed from memory by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra.

Textures, tensions and transformations across musical perspectives imbue the Tanglewood programme Thomas Adès inherited from Esa-Pekka Salonen. 

Leading his former orchestra and soloist Pekka Kuusisto, Esa-Pekka Salonen bookends his San Francisco commission with two crowd-pleasers from the standard repertory.