Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra

About this event

This Pro Arte evening at the Alte Oper brings together Finnish orchestral tradition and late-Romantic emotional depth. It opens with the short orchestral piece “Verdigris” by contemporary Finnish composer Lotta Wennäkoski, a shimmering miniature that feels like the hall waking up. Then Argentinian cellist Sol Gabetta takes the stage for Edward Elgar’s final large-scale work, the E minor Cello Concerto – a piece she has made her own over decades. Gabetta draws a voice from her 1730 Matteo Goffriller instrument that is at once poetically forceful and full of wry melancholy, teasing out the concerto’s shifting moods. The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, led by its principal conductor Nicholas Collon, provides transparent, beautifully balanced support before returning after the interval to charge through Jean Sibelius’s First Symphony. The E minor symphony is a sweeping, Nordic-tinged canvas of longing melodies, dark-bright orchestral colour and moments of raw dramatic outburst. The evening moves from intimate reflection to surging symphonic power – less about glittering virtuosity and more about music that builds a world you can step into for two hours.