NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Sakari Oramo

From the forest to the concert hall

Nature plays an important role for all Finns, and undoubtedly for Sakari Oramo, currently principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The Finnish love of nature probably stems from the abundance of unspoilt landscape that surrounds them. Oramo’s countryman for example, the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, built himself a house for his retirement that lay in the middle of the forest, close to a lake and, it goes without saying, equipped with a sauna. The ideal environment to write a work like »Tapiola«, his last tone poem, which of course takes its inspiration from the native forests and the myths attached to them.