Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony come to the desert! I will be introducing their all-Sibelius program, part of the wonderful concert series presented by the Palm Springs Friends of Philharmonic. The organization is celebrating it 50th anniversary and has inaugurated preconcert talks for select performances. I am honored to have been invited to launch this educational opportunity for their audiences.

The program consists of three Sibelius favorites: the national treasure Finlandia, Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, and—of course—the beloved Violin Concerto in D Minor, with Georgian-born German violinist Lisa Batiashvili as soloist.

I will explore the particular musical language of Sibelius, what one scholar described as embracing “both the birth of Finnish nationalism and the emergence of a distinctively Nordic modernism at the beginning of the twentieth century.”