Lahti Symphony Orchestra

Baiba Skride is currently one of the world’s most celebrated international violin stars. She has appeared at the Proms in London and with orchestras such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Radio Orchestra of France. She has also previously visited the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and recorded an acclaimed rendition of Brahms’ Violin Concerto with the orchestra and Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo.

Now we get to experience this celebrity Latvian violinist in a performance of Shostakovich’s colourful and technically challenging Violin Concerto No. 2 – a piece that Shostakovich composed for and dedicated to the charismatic violinist and countryman David Oistrakh.  

Finland is celebrating 100 years as an independent nation and is marking the occasion with massive amounts of music. Naturally, Jean Sibelius is one of the most prominent figures and here, we will hear a guest performance by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, which has received numerous awards for its Sibelius interpretations, as they take on the great Finnish composer’s most beloved work: Symphony No. 5. 

But we will begin with music from contemporary Finland: in the orchestral work Hava, Lotta Wennäkoski (b.1970) aims to “explore how music can illustrate a subject the way a novel does, with contrasting light and its own language.” Wennäkoski is among the most acclaimed composers of the younger Finnish generation, and Hava is an exquisite example of her capacity to make music emerge from a single gesture.