Osmo Vänskä’s farewell concerts as the Chief Conductor of Lahti Symphony on 7 and 8 May 2008

The 20 years long period of Osmo Vänskä as Chief Conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra will come to its end this spring. The farewell concerts will be at the Sibelius Hall on 7 and 8 May 2008. In the concerts there’s the world premiere of ORA, a concerto for percussion sextet and orchestra, by the Icelandic composer Áskell Másson with the Swedish ensemble Kroumata as the soloist. In the concert programme there is also the Ninth Symphony by Anton Bruckner, which thereby ends the symphonic cycle of Bruckner performed in Lahti. The concert on Thursday, 8 May can be seen in the internet at classiclive.com live and as on-demand until 29 May 2008.

Osmo Vänskä conducted the Lahti Symphony Orchestra for the first time in 1981. In 1985 Ulf Söderblom was appointed as the Chief Conductor and Vänskä as the Principal Guest Conductor of the orchestra. In 1988 the two maestros changed their positions with one another and Vänskä became Chief Conductor. The successful period included 60 plus recordings, international record awards and concerts in many prestigious concert halls around the world. As an example of the international activity is Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, which is performed by the Lahti Symphony under Vänskä altogether 34 times, e.g. in St. Petersburg, Granada, Birmingham, Tokyo, Osaka, New York, Stockholm, Brugge, Beijing, Shanghai, Sapporo and Warsaw. After the period as Chief Conductor, Vänskä will become the Conductor Laureate of the Lahti Symphony.

One of Iceland’s leading composers, Áskell Másson (b. 1953) tells about his new work ORA: “Ora is Latin and means ‘coast’. With this title, I want to think of the ocean, the fact that Iceland is surrounded by it and that it links us to our neighbouring countries.” Másson tells also that ORA refers to the origins and the cultural heritage of Iceland: Most of the population of Iceland lives by the coast and has through the ages depended largely on the fruits of the sea. I therefore use two Icelandic folk songs associated with song and story telling from this island of sagas in conjunction with other melodic material.”