Hannu Lintu to take over as Chief Conductor of the Tampere Philharmonic in 2009

Press release September 6, 2007

Hannu Lintu is to be the Tampere Philharmonic’s next Chief Conductor, beginning in August 2009.

The appointment by the Deputy Mayor for Educational and Cultural Services of the City of Tampere was announced today at a meeting of the Committee for Cultural and Recreational Services. The three-year term of the new Chief Conductor will include at least eight concerts a year. In addition he will, after taking up his post, as a rule conduct the tours and recordings made by the Tampere Philharmonic.

“The artistically fruitful partnership between the Tampere Philharmonic and Hannu Lintu has become so close in the past few years that Lintu was the orchestra’s number-one candidate as the next Chief Conductor,” reports Maritta Hirvonen, General Manager of the Tampere Philharmonic. “Hannu Lintu is one of the finest and most interesting Finnish conductors. The orchestra is extremely happy to be able to face the future with him.”

Says Hannu Lintu of his forthcoming term: “This is a natural continuation of a friendship and a musically rewarding partnership stretching back many years already. The orchestra has sailed with a strong fair wind in recent years, just one proof of this being what is at the moment the boldest and most interesting recording policy in Finland and the great international acclaim for the resulting discs. The Tampere Philharmonic is a musically stimulating, ambitious working environment. Its objective can and should therefore be a leading position among the Nordic symphony orchestras.”

Hannu Lintu (39) has been making guest conducting appearances with the Tampere Philharmonic since 1998. The repertoire conducted by him in Tampere has included symphonies by Haydn, Beethoven, Mahler, Nielsen and Shostakovich and orchestral works by Debussy, Sibelius, Webern and Berio.

In particular Lintu has conducted, in Tampere, a large number of works by the Tampere Philharmonic’s composer-in-residence Jouni Kaipainen; the premieres of the third symphony and the bassoon concerto, for example. They were also recorded on the first disc made jointly by the Tampere Philharmonic and Hannu Lintu, released in autumn 2006. The disc has received excellent reviews and was one of the ten shortlisted for the Disc of the Month title in the March issue of the prestigious Gramophone magazine.

In taking up his new appointment Hannu Lintu follows Chief Conductor John Storgårds, whose three-year term ends in summer 2009. Lintu will be guesting with the Tampere Philharmonic several times before this, his next appearance being in February 2008.

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