HANDRAILS AT THE CONCERT HALL

In response to comments from the public and the experience of audiences at the Helsinki Music Centre, the management has asked the architects to present a plan for improving the present handrails.

Further information here.

SEASON TICKETS SPRING 2012

Season tickets for spring season 2012 are on sale at the Lippupiste ticket offices 23.11.-31.12.2011.

Brochure for season tickets for spring 2012.

AUTUMN SEASON 2011 BEGINS NEW MUSIC CENTRE ERA FOR THE HELSINKI PHILHARMONIC

The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra has played at Finlandia Hall for 40 years. We have had a chequered history there and we now stand on the brink of a new era – at the Helsinki Music Centre! Now, for the first time, the Orchestra will have the use of a hall designed expressly for the performance of acoustic concert music, and our musicians will have premises of their own in which to practise and work as in any ordinary job.

The Music Centre will bring many changes for audiences and the Orchestra alike. The programmes for our first seasons there have been planned on an even broader basis than before, because we want to give our audiences a chance to hear different kinds of ensembles and programme packages in all our concert series. In addition to ordinary symphony orchestra concerts we are therefore offering chamber music, recitals, swing and jazz. We are doing all this in order to find out just how the new hall responds; we can then adjust our programming accordingly. Autumn 2011 will thus be a pilot, running-in season.

To mark the start of this new era we have invited two artists of international renown to join us. Soprano Soile Isokoski, artist-in-residence for our first Music Centre concert season 2011/2012, is to do six different projects with us, culminating in a recording to be made in April 2012. The other new partner is Estonian Olari Elts, who begins a three-year term as our Principal Guest Conductor in August 2011. We are pleased that these international artists have agreed to enter into a long-term partnership and to appear with us regularly.

The majority of the autumn’s guest artists are Finns. The idea is to give our previous Chief Conductors and other close partners a chance to be among the first to sample the long-awaited concert hall. Chief Conductor John Storgårds is under contract to us until the end of the 2013/2014 season. Of the move to the Music Centre he says: “I am especially proud to be able to conduct the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra at this fascinating juncture as the new concert hall opens this autumn.”

The HPO’s present 3850 season ticket holders are bursting with curiosity as we move to the Music Centre. We are offering these dedicated listeners four different sets of 5-6 concerts. During the autumn season we are also putting on four gala concerts on specific themes: on October 7 we join forces with the Women’s Bank, on November 1 the winners of the Sibelius Singing Competition will be our soloists, on November 18 star pianist Denis Matsuev will perform in a concert under the auspices of the international Rachmaninoff Foundation, and on December 17 the Music Centre’s opening season ends with a visit by the magnificent Latvian State Choir under our Principal Guest Conductor Olari Elts.

www.hel.fi/filharmonia