Dalia Stasevska Essentials

Dynamic, imaginative and versatile, Dalia Stasevska has fast become one of the most compelling conductors on the podium today. This playlist offers a small glimpse at this remarkable Finn’s musical reach. We begin with a track from her most recent project, Dalia’s Mixtape, in which she conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 10 electrifying pieces by diverse contemporary composers. Staying with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, there’s Brahms and Busoni violin concertos, and piano concertos by Martinů and Stasevska’s fellow Finn, the late and much-missed Einojuhani Rautavaara. We hear, too, the incredible but neglected music of another Finnish composer, Helvi Leiviskä, performed by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, an orchestra that welcomed Stasevska as their chief conductor in 2021. And we explore the movie music plus a brand-new secular mass by Stasevska’s husband, the bass guitarist and composer Lauri Porra.