Aurora Music Festival – Sibelius with Saraste & Dvorak with Maisky

With great pride, Aurora Music Festival presents this evening’s conductor: Jukka-Pekka Saraste. He is one of the most esteemed and acclaimed conductors in the music world today. At this concert, he will lead the Aurora Symphony Orchestra in fellow countryman Jean Sibelius’ magnificent Symphony No 1. After a successful European tour, the symphony was played at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. Sibelius wrote home: “My music was a grand, utterly colossal success.”

During the festival, Jukka-Pekka Saraste has also carried out a large development project together with the orchestra and the artists, called LEAD: a concept for developing mentorship and leadership in an orchestral context.

Yet another highlight will, naturally, be welcoming back Mischa Maisky, now as a soloist in Dvorák’s acclaimed and beloved Cello Concerto. Conductor Johannes Gustavsson leads the orchestra. In 2008 he received the first ever Herbert Blomstedt Conductor’s Award from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. That same year, he received the Audience Award at the Toscanini competition in Taormina. Over the years, he has performed with most of the Nordic region’s professional symphony orchestras.

In association with Aurora Music Festival