This upcoming season, Susanna Mälkki returns to Helsinki to conduct the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra on September 17 and 18. The program features Berlioz’s lyric scene, Cléopâtre, who he considered to be the ultimate romantic, with mezzo Karen Deshayes breathing life into her tragic end. Paul Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, part of so many people’s childhoods since it appeared in Disney’s Fantasia, sets a happier tone. An even more luminous piece rounds out the program: Laterna Magica by the late Kaija Saariaho.
On September 25 and 26. she conducts the Danish National Symphony Orchestra at Copenhagen’s DR Koncerthuset. Dvořák’s temperamental violin concerto will be performed by Isabelle Faust, followed by Sibelius’ Symphonies No. 6 and 7. These two symphonies complement each other with their colours; one bright and refreshing, the other dense and fateful – a struggle between hope and doubt. The composer compared his sixth symphony to “cold spring water” and “the scent of the first snow”. The seventh symphony is darker and more compact, a coherent musical arc that nevertheless rises against a dazzling light.