Czech Philharmonic • Open Air Concert

Dalia Stasevska, the chief conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra in Finland, the artistic director of the Lahti International Sibelius Festival, and the principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, was predestined to be a musician from an early age thanks to her parents. She devoted herself intensively to violin playing, but then at age 13 she heard a symphony orchestra for the first time, and the sound thrilled her. She soon began to study scores and to play the violin parts along with recordings—her desire was to be part of the orchestra. She was also fascinated by opera, which was something she did not hesitate to talk about at school: “My friends were listening to the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, but I just wanted opera. Whenever we had to do some kind of show and tell at school about what interested us I would always talk about opera. People would boo me, but I’d say ‘No! – Just listen to this magnificent music!’ I knew it was special and I was happy to be different.”

The next important event in her musical development occurred at age 20, when she first saw a woman conducting. Until then, it had never occurred to her that besides playing the violin and composing, she could also go down that path. She registered in Jorma Panula’s conducting masterclass, and since then, as she says, she “never let go of the baton”.

After attending the conservatoire in Tampere, Finland, she studied violin, viola, and conducting at the Sibelius Academy. She is now famous not only in the Nordic countries (she was born in the Ukraine, but she has been living in Finland since the age of five), but also all over Europe and the USA. She collaborates regularly with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. With the BBC Symphony Orchestra, she toured Japan in the autumn of 2022, and she has already appeared twice at the opening concert of the BBC Proms. They also recently released their joint debut album titled Dalia’s Mixtape, which reveals the conductor’s fascination with contemporary music.

She is an energetic proponent of contemporary works, especially with her “own” Lahti Symphony Orchestra. She routinely performs the music of such composers as Missy Mazzoli, Thomas Adès, Kaija Saariaho, and Outi Tarkiainen. She is also performing a work by the latter female composer with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in Perth, where she is headed immediately after her Prague concert. Also to be heard at that concert is Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5, which Stasevka performs very often. In the following months, she will also be heard by audiences in Sydney and in London at the BBC Proms, then at the end of the summer, a marathon awaits Stasevska at the Sibelius Festival, where she will perform all of the symphonies by that Finnish composer. She feels a closeness to Sibelius, not only thanks to family ties (her husband, a guitarist with the famous metal band Stratovarius, is Sibelius’s great-grandson). “I grew up with Sibelius’s music. I couldn’t tell you when I heard his works for the first time. His music was always around me, so it is fully a part of me. When I conduct it, I feel very natural.”