Home city tour to Vuosaari and Kannelmäki

At the beginning of December 2019, the HPO went on a long-awaited tour in its home city. After concerts at the Vuotalo Hall and Kannelmäki Church it returned to the Musiikkitalo to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Sibelius and Finnish Music Day on December 8, performing the tour programme to a full hall. The tour was unusual in that the orchestra gave the tour concerts without a conductor, concentrating instead on closer listening and interaction with fellow players.

The cornerstone of the tour concerts was Symphony No. 3 by Jean Sibelius, which the HPO had premiered with Sibelius himself conducting in 1907. Giving the tour programme an extra, celebratory historical resonance were the maestro’s Six Humoresques first performed exactly a century before. The soloist in the Humoresques on the home-city tour was Alina Pogostkina, winner of the 2005 Sibelius Violin Competition.