Okko Kamu

Elina Mustonen began playing the harpsichord at the age of eight. After completing her studies at the Sibelius Academy in 1983, she proceeded to the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam to study with Ton Koopman and was awarded a soloist diploma in 1988. In 2006 she obtained her Doctoral degree at the Sibelius Academy. The topic of her thesis was J.S. Bach's harpsichord pedagogy. Ever since her debut concert at the Jyväskylä Summer Festival in 1987 Ms. Mustonen has performed widely as a soloist and chamber musician. In addition to Finland, she has been heard in Estonia, Iceland, Germany, the UK, Italy, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and the United States. Ms. Mustonen has appeared as a soloist with most of the Finnish orchestras such as the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Sinfonia Lahti and the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra. Her repertoire includes not only the major Baroque concertos but also the harpsichord concertos of Francis Poulenc, Bohuslav Martinu and Manuel de Falla. Ms. Mustonen has made several critically acclaimed recordings. Her latest achievement is a complete recording of the Six Partitas by J.S. Bach.

I often imagined the instructions Bach might give the performer of his music in the present day. What might he say? Describing Bach as a conductor in the 18th century, J.M. Gesner said he was full of rhythm in every part of his body. Bach himself stated his priorities in the title of his keyboard works: …above all to achieve a singing style. Knowing what a phenomenal organist and improviser Bach was, his example to us must be obvious. The music must live in the here and now- forever new. (Ismo Eskelinen) Ismo Eskelinen s career began when he was 17, spurred on by many prizes.

Marian Migdal was born in Poland and studied in Warsaw, Stockholm, Cologne and at The Juilliard School in New York City. In 1971 he won the ARD International Music Competition in Munich and two years later the International Schumann Competition in New York. Numerous concert tours took him to the United States, Europe, Japan and China, where he performed in the most important music centres with distinguished orchestras and conductors, including Yuri Ahronovitch, Moshe Atzmon, James Conlon, Dean Dixon, Charles Dutoit, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Okko Kamu, Zdenĕk Macal, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Uri Segal, Walter Weller and Carlo Zecchi. Besides his recordings for radio and television Marian Migdal made a large number of commercial recordings, principally for EMI and RCA, featuring works by Berwald, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Galuppi, Grieg, Haydn, Liszt, Mozart, Schubert and Tchaikovsky. For his recording of Franz Berwald’s Piano Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London, Marian Migdal was presented with the Swedish Recording Award. He was a professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg.

The Norrköping Symphony Orchestra (in Swedish: Norrköpings Symfonieorchester) is one of the leaders among Sweden's crop of regional orchestras. It has spawned the careers of several conductors who went on to international renown. Located in the old industrial city of Norrköping in southwestern Sweden, the orchestra was founded in 1912 and offered well-advertised concerts from the start. As of 2018, with 86 musicians, the orchestra plays a major role in the city's musical life with its 50 indoor concerts a year at the Louis de Geer Concert Hall in Norrköping, plus a schedule of summer concerts outdoors (including one performance on a barge). They collaborate regularly with musicians in the jazz, folk, and rock fields, and their tours take them not only to nearby Linköping and to Stockholm, but to Austria, Eastern Europe, Japan, and China. The Norrköping Symphony's roster of former music directors includes Herbert Blomstedt (1954-1962, later conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra), Finland's Okko Kamu (1972-1979, later conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and other groups), and future Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst (1986-1991). Michael Francis' tenure concluded in 2016, and in the late 2010s the orchestra invited top international figures as guest conductors. Christian Lindberg, a frequent conductor during this period, has led the orchestra in the latest installments of an ongoing cycle of the symphonies of Swedish composer Allan Pettersson; the cycle began in 1992 and has appeared on the BIS label. The orchestra's large catalog of other recordings, mostly on BIS, has focused on Swedish music but has also encompassed works by Beethoven, Max Reger, and (on the CPO label in 2017) the Austrian composer Siegmund von Hausegger. Another innovative Norrköping Symphony Orchestra project during this period was Chelsea Hotel, featuring orchestral arrangements of compositions by the folk and folk-rock songwriters who stayed in New York's Chelsea Hotel in the '60s including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen.