"Friendship is faithful in all things" we learn from William Shakespeare - although Much Ado About Nothing is a phrase that will not do to describe the Finnish Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra's concert, which we listen to live on Wednesday 18th October from 7 pm. The musicians will take to the stage of the Helsinki Music Centre, conducted by British conductor Nicholas Collon.

For Mira by Héloïse Werner is the first opus we'll be able to listen to, a page that the young Franco-British composer dedicated to her friend, the artist Mira Calix, who died in 2022. The premiere of this opus took place on 25 March 2023 in London - a contemporary page, then, in which we can see the friendship between two young artists, both of whom have been important voices on the London music scene in recent years

Dmitri Shostakovich's Concerto No. 1 for cello and orchestra is also a work that recalls the friendship between two artists - this time the composer and the man to whom it was dedicated, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. From 1943, he began studying composition at the Moscow Conservatory with Shostakovich. The cellist recalled a conversation from those years with the composer's wife, whom he wanted to commission a concerto: "Nina Vasilievna, what can I do to get Dmitri Dmitrievich to write me a Cello Concerto? He replied, "Slava, if you want Dmitri Dmitrievich to write something for you, the only prescription I can give you is this - never ask him or talk to him about it.""

After the break, the Finnish musicians will perform a large opus of early Romantic literature: Franz Schubert's Ninth Symphony No. 9. Although he is best known for his vocal-instrumental miniatures - to be precise, for the hundreds of lieder he left to posterity - the Viennese composer is still regarded as one of the great symphonists of the 19th century. Here is how Robert Schumann described this page: "The symphony has had an effect on us that has not been seen since Beethoven... It will probably be many years before the work is fully understood in Germany, but there is no danger that it will ever be overlooked or forgotten. It carries in it the very essence of immortal youth."

So the concert on Wednesday October 18th is as attractive as can be: friendship, youth, symphonism and contemporaneity - all starting at 7 pm on our station's European Stage programme.

Photo credit: Chris Christodolou