Hannu Lintu, Chief Conductor / Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra since August 2013, Hannu Lintu previously held the positions of Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Dublin, and Artistic Director of the Helsingborg Symphony and Turku Philharmonic orchestras.
Highlights of Lintu’s 2014/15 season include his debut with the Hallé and appearances with the BBC Scottish Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic and Lahti Symphony orchestras, as well as WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. In the USA he returns to the Baltimore Symphony and Saint Louis Symphony orchestras and makes his debut with the Detroit Symphony and Minnesota orchestras. Last season Lintu stepped in at short notice to conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra, and other recent engagements have included the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig and Orchestre national de Lyon; the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and Gothenburg Symphony orchestras; and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Houston Symphony.
Recent operatic projects include Sallinen’s Kullervo at the 2014 Savonlinna Opera Festival and Tannhäuser with Tampere Opera in 2012. Regularly appearing with Finnish National Opera, Lintu has conducted several productions including Parsifal (directed by Harry Kupfer), Carmen, and Aulis Sallinen’s King Lear. He has also worked with Estonian National Opera, recording Tauno Pylkkänen’s Mare and her Son.
Hannu Lintu has made several recordings for Ondine, Naxos, Avie and Hyperion, with whom he recently recorded Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos.22 and 24 with Angela Hewitt and the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Ottawa. Other recent recordings feature works by Ligeti, including the Violin Concerto with Benjamin Schmid, and Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony with Angela Hewitt and Valerie Hartmann-Claverie – both for Ondine with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Lintu has received several accolades for his recordings, including a 2011 Grammy nomination for Best Opera CD plus Gramophone Award nominations for his recordings of Enescu’s Symphony No.2 with the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra and the Violin Concertos of Sibelius and Thomas Adès with Augustin Hadelich and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
Hannu Lintu studied cello and piano at the Sibelius Academy, where he later studied conducting with Jorma Panula. He participated in masterclasses with Myung-Whun Chung at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy, and took first prize at the Nordic Conducting Competition in Bergen in 1994.

Praised by The Times for her “noble playing, with its rhythmic life, taut and rigorous,” Akiko Suwanai is the youngest ever winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition and now enjoys a prestigious international career. Recent highlights include concerts with the BBC Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and NHK Symphony Orchestra and a tour of Japan with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Suwanai has also toured with The Philadelphia Orchestra (Yannick Nézet-Séguin), London Symphony Orchestra (Valery Gergiev), Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (Claus Peter Flor), and Orchestre de Paris (Paavo Järvi). Conductor collaborations include Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Andrew Davis, David Robertson, Susanna Mälkki, Neeme Järvi, Sakari Oramo and Seiji Ozawa.
This season’s highlights include tours in Japan with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Sir Antonio Pappano) and The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen (Paavo Järvi) and a Russian tour with Festival Strings Lucerne. Additionally, she returns to the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and makes her debuts with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (Kirill Karabits) and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (Gordon Gerrard). Further ahead Suwanai will perform with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Hannu Lintu) and Bamberger Symphoniker (Herbert Blomstedt) and will take part in the Bergen International Festival, performing with Leif Ove Andsnes.
Suwanai is Artistic Director of the International Music Festival NIPPON, which she launched in 2013. The 2015 festival sees her give the world premiere of Karol Beffa’s Violin Concerto with The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, along with recitals, masterclasses and charity concerts for Great East Japan Earthquake. In previous festivals she performed the Japanese premiere of Salonen’s Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by the composer and the world premiere of Eric Tanguy’s In a Dream with pianist Akira Eguchi.
Suwanai has a broad repertoire ranging from Bach to contemporary composers. She performed the world premiere of Peter Eötvös’ violin concerto Seven at the Lucerne Festival with the Festival Academy Orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez. Her live recording of the work with the Gothenburg Symphony was released by BMC Records in 2013. This summer she was invited to the Helsinki Festival to perform Salonen’s Violin Concerto conducted by the composer. Suwanai’s extensive discography with Universal Music has garnered much critical acclaim and her most recent release is a recital disc with pianist Itamar Golan, entitled Emotion.
Akiko Suwanai performs on the Stradivarius ‘Dolphin’ violin from 1714, one of the most famous violins known today and previously owned by Jascha Heifetz, which has been kindly loaned to her by the Nippon Music Foundation.

‘The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra is a splendid body indeed: scrupulous in ensemble, refined in tone, almost aristocratic.’ (The Times)
The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (FRSO) is the orchestra of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle). Its mission is to produce and promote Finnish musical culture. Its Chief Conductor as of autumn 2013 is Hannu Lintu.
The Radio Orchestra of ten players founded in 1927 grew to symphony orchestra strength in the 1960s. Its previous Chief Conductors have been Toivo Haapanen, Nils-Eric Fougstedt, Paavo Berglund, Okko Kamu, Leif Segerstam, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Sakari Oramo. The FRSO has two Honorary Conductors: Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Sakari Oramo.
The latest contemporary music is a major item in the repertoire of the FRSO, which each year premieres a number of Yle commissions. Another of the orchestra’s tasks is to record all Finnish orchestral music for the Yle archive. During the 2014/2015 season it will premiere five works commissioned by Yle.
The 2014/2015 season will feature such works as colourful orchestral tone poems by Richard Strauss, symphonies by Shostakovich and Haydn’s mighty Creation. As its conductors, the Orchestra has invited such celebrated international maestros as Lorin Maazel, Herbert Blomstedt and Kent Nagano. Its collaboration with its Honorary Chief Conductors Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Sakari Oramo will continue, and Esa-Pekka Salonen will be coming along to conduct a performance of Stravinsky’s Firebird. Also among the guests will be such shining vocal stars as Karita Mattila, Nina Stemme, Sandrine Piau, Christian Gerhaher, Michael Petrenko and Soile Isokoski. Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin and Tabea Zimmermann, viola will both be playing some Bartók, and pianist Olli Mustonen will join the FRSO in launching a series of Prokofiev piano concertos.
The FRSO regularly tours to all parts of the world. The highlight of the season 2013/2014 was the successful concert in Musikverein, Vienna during the Middle European tour in January 2014 with chief conductor Hannu Lintu. During the 2014/2015 season FRSO will be heading for Stockholm and Bucharest as well as Western Finland.
The FRSO has recorded works by Ligeti, Eötvös, Nielsen, Hakola, Lindberg, Saariaho, Salonen, Sallinen and others, and the debut disc of the opera Aslak Hetta by Armas Launis. Its discs have reaped some major distinctions, such as the BBC Music Magazine Award and the Acad?mie Charles Cros Award. The disc of the Sibelius and Lindberg Violin Concertos (Sony BMG) with Lisa Batiashvili as the soloist received the MIDEM Classical Award in 2008, in which year the New York Times chose the other Lindberg disc as its Record of the Year. The recording of Ligeti’s Violin Concerto was Editor’s Choice in the Gramophone in February 2014.
All the FRSO concerts both in Finland and abroad are broadcast, usually live, on Yle Radio 1. They can also be heard and watched with excellent live stream quality on the FRSO website (yle.fi/rso).