YS goes Turku

On Saturday Ylioppilaskunnan Soittajat visited my favourite city in Finland, the former capital Turku. Sadly it was sleeting all day, and there wasn't much time to hang around the town soaking up the culture (must come back in the summer). Still, lots of people enjoyed a trip round the medieval castle – the oldest in Finland.

As for the concert, YS played very well indeed, much better than in the previous concert on Thursday. Apart from a slight hiccup involving the celesta (too long a story to interest anyone; suffice it to say that I spent about three hours sorting this out yesterday when common sense should have prevailed...), the only unfortunate matter was that there were so few people in the audience. This always seems to be the case with our concerts outside Helsinki, though this time we imagined that the composer (who himself studied in Turku) might have rallied all his friends to the concert.

One of the members of the audience was a reviewer from Turun Sanomat. His review demonstrates that, though many may find this hard to believe, people in papers other than Helsingin Sanomat can write thoughtful, insightful reviews that put concerts in their proper context. The subject of HS's music criticisers :-) is one I'm sure I'll come back to many times in the future.