5th February concert takes Pietari Inkinen Back to the Roots

Published 30.01.2026

Kuopio Symphony Orchestra performs music by Wagner, Dvořák and Sibelius

On Thursday, 5th of February at 6 pm, Pietari Inkinen returns to Kuopio to conduct the Back to the Roots season concert at the Kuopio Music Centre Concert Hall. The evening’s programme reflects milestones and composers of great significance to Inkinen, whose works have accompanied him throughout his career. The concert will feature overtures by Richard Wagner and Antonín Dvořák, as well as Jean Sibelius’s Symphonies No. 6 and 7.

Kuopio has held a special place in Pietari Inkinen’s heart ever since he won the 2000 Kuopio Violin Competition 26 years ago. Now he returns to the roots of his musical career; Inkinen is delighted to lead the KSO again after a long break, at the acoustically unique Concert Hall of the Kuopio Music Centre.

As a Finnish conductor, Inkinen has a particular connection to Sibelius; during his work in New Zealand and Japan, he recorded numerous Sibelius works. He served as chief conductor of the Prague Symphony Orchestra and has extensive expertise in Czech repertoire. As music director of the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, he made several recordings of Dvořák’s works.

The concert opens with the overture to Tannhäuser, one of Richard Wagner’s most famous orchestral pieces. It presents the central opposing forces of the opera: the spiritual, elevated theme of the Pilgrims’ Chorus and the sensual music of the Venusberg. Antonín Dvořák’s Othello Overture is a dramatic and dark-toned orchestral work portraying the central themes of Shakespeare’s tragedy: passion, jealousy and tragic fate. The work is part of a series of three symphonic overtures.

Jean Sibelius described his Sixth Symphony as “the freshness of cold water”, and the sound of the piece is indeed pure and translucent. Concluding the concert is Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony, the culmination of the composer’s symphonic output— a single-movement, seamlessly flowing work whose musical form grows from a single idea. Completed in 1924, the symphony became Sibelius’s last— a kind of distilled testament to his symphonic thinking.

The duration of the concert is approximately 1 hour 40 minutes, including an interval.

Before the concert, at 5.30 pm at the Hall of Light, there will be a Pre-Talk open to all, with the artists of the evening.

Tickets: 34,60 € / 28,10 € senior citizens and groups min. 20 persons / 10,60 € children under the age of 16 and students.

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KUOPIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Producer & Publicity Manager Elina Prepula, tel. 044 718 2364, elina.prepula(at)kuopio.fi
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