Composer

From child prodigy to multi-award-winning legend, pianist Gerhard Oppitz brings Beethoven's virtuosic Piano Concerto No. 3 and world-class flair to the Kurhaus. Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen's orchestral work "The Ring of Fire and Love," which revolves around atmospheric trumpet solos, connects to the moment a baby raises its head at birth. No composer is more closely linked to his homeland than Jean Sibelius. His Symphony No. 1, with its many original themes, was a high point of his work. Also Finnish is Anna-Maria Helsing on the podium. Her meteoric career led to her appointment as Chief Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra in 2023.

5th Symphony Concert: Fire and Love

Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden

Vast Scandinavian snowfields and impenetrable pine forests meet a blazing musical spirit in Jean Sibelius's alluring Symphony No. 5. British maestro Nicholas Collon, chief conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony, makes his Atlanta Symphony Orchestra debut, along with the young cello firebrand Kian Soltani. Witness Soltani's superhuman artistry as he tackles Lutosławski's blisteringly virtuosic Cello Concerto. The concert opens with the ASO debut of Outi Tarkianien's mystical symphonic poem The Ring of Fire and Love.

Sibelius Symphony No. 5

The Woodruff Arts Center

Finnish conductor John Storgårds makes his San Francisco Symphony debut with an exhilarating program centered on Beethoven’s monumental Fifth Symphony. Beethoven’s subject wasn’t the individual but the human condition, the fate we heroically create for ourselves, one choice at a time. Has any transition from C minor to C major ever felt more blissful, more fully earned? Less familiar but equally powerful is Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen’s visceral and life-affirming The Rapids of Life, heard in its US premiere. Pianist Seong-Jin Cho and SF Symphony Principal Trumpet Mark Inouye perform Shostakovich’s sprightly and intelligent Piano Concerto No. 1, an underperformed gem that spans the silly and the sublime. Initially conceived as a trumpet concerto, the work still gives that instrument plenty of love: this is a double concerto in all but name.

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Beethoven 5 & Seong-Jin Cho

Davies Symphony Hall

If any orchestra has Sibelius's music in its veins, it's the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra: The orchestra has premiered almost all of Finland's national composer's symphonic works and, through its tours, has contributed significantly to his international fame. The First Symphony, in particular, is a true home game. At the conductor's desk and on solo violin are two top Finnish musicians, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Pekka Kuusisto.

Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra / Pekka Kuusisto / Jukka-Pekka Saraste

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

Tchaikovsky’s sixth and final symphony glows with light and passion, but also holds undercurrents of anxiety and uncertainty. In a letter to his brother Anatoly, Tchaikovsky wrote: “I am completely preoccupied with the new work and find it difficult to tear myself away from it. I believe it will be one of my best. I must finish it as soon as possible.” And he was right – it is a true symphonic masterpiece.

Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique

Stockholm City Hall

After Vivi Vassileva in 2023, this season we are once again putting a young instrumentalist at the center of the BaseCamp: Asya Fateyeva is a saxophonist born in Crimea who has been playing in the » premier league « since winning the German Music Competition in 2012. She won the ECHO Klassik in 2016. For this exceptional artist, there are no musical boundaries, just heaps of exciting music from all genres that she adapts. The focal point of our BaseCamp New Music is the fantastically beautiful saxophone concerto Saivo by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen. She sees music as a force of nature that can change lives – and calls for us to rethink and change our relationship with nature. Like Sauli Zinovjev (see Freitagskonzert 3), she is interested in ancient rituals, especially those of the Sámi people of her Finnish homeland: for the Sámi, Saivo is a sacred place where dialogue is possible beyond the boundaries of this world. The I and the you, water and stone, fire and ash and a descent to the spirits of the ancestors – Saivo is a great spiritual journey, made for the vastness of space in BaseCamp!

Neue Musik

BaseCamp Young Hostel

Spend an evening with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Aylesbury as young Korean violinist Inmo Yang joins the orchestra for Beethoven's Violin Concerto, a timeless masterpiece that has captivated audiences for centuries. His passionate performance will leave you breathless.

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto

Aylesbury Waterside Theatre

Conductor David Afkham makes his SLSO debut in a program of struggle, then exultation. In The Ring of Fire and Love, Finnish composer Outi Tarkianen explores the earth-shattering moment of a child’s birth. Pianist Saleem Ashkar brings searching intelligence to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24, dramatic music written at a time of personal joy. Brahms toiled over his First Symphony for decades, producing a life-affirming journey from darkness to light.  

Brahms' First Symphony

University of Missouri-St. Louis

Nature, its beauty, its endangerment: These are the themes of our Biennale and of this concert, which takes us around the world. It begins with a new work by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen, whose work is strongly inspired by her native Lapland. Brett Dean’s Fire Music in turn refers to a devastating bushfire in Australia in 2009. Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring takes us on to North America, while Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Chôros No. 10 echoes the birdsong of the Amazon. Marin Alsop makes her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Biennale “Paradise lost?” Marin Alsop conducts images of nature

Berliner Philharmonie

Spend an evening with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Hull as young Korean violinist Inmo Yang joins the orchestra for Beethoven's Violin Concerto, a timeless masterpiece that has captivated audiences for centuries. His passionate performance will leave you breathless.

Tarkiainen, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky

Hull City Hall

London Sinfonietta bring the wild beauty of nature to life through music that’ll leave you in awe. Debussy’s shimmering reflections, Xenakis’ untamed energy, and a world-class trio of clarinet, cello and piano create an immersive experience that’s both powerful and deeply moving.

After Dark: Music In Nature's Glow

University of Southampton Highfield Campus

### Event Description: Nordic Landscapes and Portraits - Minnesota Orchestra

**Event Title:** Nordic Landscapes and Portraits

**Dates:** Friday, January 10, 2025, and Saturday, January 11, 2025

**Venue:** Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, MN 55403

**Duration:** 2 hours, including intermission

**Event Overview:**
Immerse yourself in the evocative sounds of the Nordic region with the Minnesota Orchestra's "Nordic Landscapes and Portraits" concert. This program is a musical journey through the fresh voices and rich traditions of Nordic composers, offering a unique exploration of landscapes and portraits through music.

**Program Highlights:**
- **Elfrida Andrée:** Concert Overture
- **Carl Nielsen:** Clarinet Concerto, featuring Principal Clarinet Gabriel Campos Zamora
- **Daníel Bjarnason:** Air to Breath, from Bow to String
- **Bent Sørensen:** Evening Land
- **Outi Tarkiainen:** Midnight Sun Variations
- **Jean Sibelius:** Finlandia

**Featured Artists:**
- **Conductor:** Thomas Søndergård, Music Director of the Minnesota Orchestra
- **Clarinet:** Gabriel Campos Zamora, Principal Clarinet of the Minnesota Orchestra

**Ticket Information:**
Tickets for this concert are available now as part of a package. Save up to 15% and receive subscriber perks when you purchase tickets for three or more concerts. Individual tickets will go on sale on July 29.

**Additional Information:**
- **Pre-concert Activities:** Enhance your concert experience with pre-concert activities.
- **Valet Parking:** Available for your convenience.
- **Pre-order Beverages:** Skip the lines by pre-ordering your drinks.
- **Accessibility Services:** Armless & bariatric chairs, assistive listening devices, large-print programs, noise-canceling headphones, service animals, and wheelchair & accessible seating are available upon request.

**Plan Your Visit:**
- **Directions & Parking:** Parking is available just steps away from Orchestra Hall in the city-owned and skyway-connected 11th and Marquette Ramp.
- **Minnesota Orchestra Mobile App:** Download the app to pre-order intermission drinks, scan your ticket for entry, and access exclusive deals.

**Presented by:** Ameriprise Financial

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Minnesota Orchestra's official website. Enjoy an evening of captivating music that brings the beauty and drama of Nordic landscapes to life.

Nordic Landscapes And Portraits

Minnesota Orchestra

The Philharmonia Orchestra’s series exploring Nordic composers’ relationship with the landscapes of their birth wouldn’t be complete without these evocative works

Sibelius & Grieg: In the Land of the Mountain King

Southbank Centre

Our series Nordic Soundscapes, exploring Nordic composers’ relationship with the landscapes of their birth, would not be complete without Sibelius’s and Grieg’s most popular works.

Get under the skin of Stravinsky’s The Firebird as it's deconstructed and reassembled by Aurora Orchestra, presenter Tom Service, and conductor Nicholas Collon.

Aurora Orchestra: Stravinsky's Firebird by Heart

Chief conductor Pierre Bluese conducts three very different works this evening, which together show three sides of the orchestra's sound and possibilities.

Blouses & Brahms

Odense Concert Hall

Mikael Karlsson's song cycle So We Will Vanish , about the natural destruction in nature, is dedicated to the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. When she now performs the work in the Berwaldhallen, it is together with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Jukka-Pekka Saraste. The multi-layered work The Ring of Fire and Love by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen opens this concert, which concludes with Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony – inspired by his brief, unhappy marriage.

So We Will Vanish With Anne Sofie Von Otter

SR Berwaldhallen

Members of the Dover Quartet join other Festival artists in the youthfully exuberant, Classical-era Sonata a quattro No. 1, written by Rossini when he was 12 years old, and Brahms’s sweeping String Sextet in G Major. Between the two works, the Festival presents the US premiere of a commissioned quintet by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen, who Gramophone notes “[fuses] jazz and classical idioms” and “draws on her Lapland roots and on the mystery and melancholy of life in the north.” 

Rossini & Brahms

New Mexico Museum of Art

Welcome back the amazing Jennifer Koh in Missy Mazzoli’s Violin Concerto, a work composed for her after a decade of previous collaborations. Koh premiered the work in 2022 in a performance conducted by Aspen Conducting Academy alumna Gemma New. Subtitled “Procession," the work is inspired by medieval rituals developed during the Plague. The Washington Post described it as “an unsettling work that opens like a trapdoor, or the moment you fall asleep… Like Vaughan Williams, Mazzoli taps into and transforms a hymnal history—albeit with a more “messed-up” (her words) twist. Mazzoli conjures penitential processions, “melting hymns,” spells cast over broken bones and a conclusory ascent to the heavens.”

Chamber Symphony: Jennifer Koh, Sibelius Symphony No. 2

Michael Klein Music Tent

John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

MediaCityUK

Finland and its culture dominate Symphony Hall in this concert. Finnish conductor John Storgårds leads the first in our Music of the Midnight Sun series, an exploration of Nordic storytelling and music. Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen’s vivid soundscapes prove she is a worthy successor to her compatriot Jean Sibelius; her nuanced and colorful Midnight Sun Variations that transport you to her homeland. Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto debuts with the BSO as the orchestra performs the great Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s 1911 Violin Concerto for the first time. The program closes with three of Sibelius’s tone poems based on Finnish legends, their moods ranging from sweeping power to contemplative mystery.

John Storgårds conducts Tarkiainen, Nielsen, and Sibelius with Pekka Kuusisto, violin

The Soviets called Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony an “optimistic tragedy”, but the reality is infinitely more complex (and compelling) than that. It’s a symphony of dark secrets and shattering power: a powerful contrast to the heavenly radiance of Messiaen’s musical prayer, and the haunting tenderness and magical new sounds of Outi Tarkiainen’s Milky Ways.

Dark visions, Milky Ways

Barbican Centre

Our series Nordic Soundscapes, exploring Nordic composers’ relationship with the landscapes of their birth, would not be complete without Sibelius’s and Grieg’s most popular works.

Finnish conductor Emilia Hoving begins her concert with Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. Originally written for Ibsen’s play about the adventures of a globetrotting Norwegian antihero, Grieg’s music has become inextricably linked with his homeland. For this suite, Grieg picked out his listeners’ favourite moments, including the dreamy ‘Morning’ and ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’, in which Peer Gynt is chased by angry trolls.

Royal Festival Hall

Rising young Finnish conductor Kristian Sallinen makes his debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Kristian Sallinen conducts music by Tchaikovsky, Tarkiainen and Sibelius

BBC Maida Vale Studios

Ung Filharmoni and the Oslo Philharmonic perform Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4, one of the composer's own favorite works, with conductor John Storgårds. The brothers Lucas and Arthus Jussen are the soloists in Fazil Say's four-hand piano concerto Phoenix.

Ung Filharmoni John Storgårds Lucas & Arthur Jussen

Oslo Concert Hall

Join us in 2022-23 for a season of vibrant musical experiences.

Cristian Măcelaru Conducts Shostakovich

Four pieces of orchestral artwork are showcased in this intensely expressionistic program led by acclaimed conductor and regular Minnesota Orchestra guest Carlos Miguel Prieto. The Ring of Fire and Love evokes an “earth-shattering, creative and cataclysmic moment,” as described by composer Outi Tarkiainen. Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder is a set of five musical love letters, sung here by soprano Emily Magee, followed by Joaquin Turina’s colorful and passionate Danzas Fantásticas. The Orchestra then creates a kaleidoscope of swirling sound in Claude Debussy’s classic portrait of the sea.

Prieto Conducts La Mer

Orchestra Hall Minneapolis

Andris Nelsons leads this program featuring Tokyo-born rising star Mao Fujita as soloist in Mozart’s popular Piano Concerto No. 21, which he composed in 1785. Finland’s greatest composer, Jean Sibelius, infused his own music with Finnish musical and cultural traditions, even in his apparently abstract symphonies. Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen, a native of Lapland near the Arctic Circle, composes music influenced by the region’s distinctive landscape and culture. Her BSO co-commissioned Day Night Day employs two traditional Sámi melodies.

Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 with Mao Fujita

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Andris Nelsons shares the Symphony Hall podium with our two 2025 Tanglewood Conducting Fellows. for this geographically oriented program. The TMC Fellows lead two movements from Bedřich Smetana’s homage to his Czech homeland: conflict and history embodied in "Vyšehrad," a Prague fort overlooking the Moldau River; and a Bohemian cultural mosaic is depicted in the journey of the river itself. Nelsons conducts the First Symphony of Finland’s greatest composer, Jean Sibelius, who infused his work with Finnish musical and cultural traditions.

Sibelius Symphony No. 1

Superstar pianist Lang Lang joins Andris Nelsons and the BSO for the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s perennially popular Piano Concerto, which combines Romantic-era passion with elements of Norwegian traditional music. Similarly inspired by folk music, Antonín Dvořák was living in the U.S. when he composed the New World Symphony, which bursts with sweeping melodies blending Bohemian soul with the spirit of America and incorporates the sounds and songs of both worlds into the iconic and oft-quoted work we know today.

Grieg Piano Concerto with Lang Lang and Dvořák Symphony No. 9

Described by composer Sir James MacMillan as “one of the most astonishing and surprising young newcomers in Scottish music,” Glasgow-born accordionist and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist (2022-24) Ryan Corbett is redefining expectations of his instrument. And in a concerto written especially for him, fellow Scot Jay Capperauld—praised for his “unbridled sonic imagination” (The Scotsman)—channels the crackling energy of electricity into music that dazzles.

Afternoon Performance: Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet

City Halls

The flags of Finland and Denmark fly high with the Violin Concerto by Osmo Vänskä’s beloved late friend, Jaakko Kuusisto, and the last symphony by Carl Nielsen. At first, Nielsen thought it would be “completely idyllic” in character, a Sinfonia semplice. When it was finished 16 months later, he wasn’t sure the name still made sense. Come prepared to discover its complexities.

Composer

Outi Tarkiainen

Events

Upcoming events

2 - 4 Apr, 2026

Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 with Mao Fujita · Boston Symphony Orchestra

Apr 3, 2026

Sibelius Symphony No. 1 · Boston Symphony Orchestra

Apr 8, 2026

Grieg Piano Concerto with Lang Lang and Dvořák Symphony No. 9 · Boston Symphony Orchestra

May 17, 2026

Afternoon Performance: Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet · BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

13 - 14 Nov, 2026

Vänskä, Chen and Nielsen · Minnesota Orchestra

Past events

Mar 4, 2026

5th Symphony Concert: Fire and Love · Staatstheater Wiesbaden

26 - 28 Feb, 2026

Sibelius Symphony No. 5 · Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

About

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