Icebreaker: musicians invite maestro to their sauna
mainI reported a few weeks back that musicians of the Finnish Radio Orchestra have their own private sauna in Helsinki’s new concert hall. Well, I’ve just heard that they broke club rules and allowed a maestro in to shed his tails and share their space after a particularly enjoyable session.
The first conductor in the steam room was … Esa-Pekka Salonen. Who’s next?
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s sauna in the dressing rooms of the new Music Centre can be seen in this short video clip on the YLE (Finnish public broadcaster) website:
http://areena.yle.fi/video/1318249017016
Not to burst anyone’s bubble, but the sauna is a tiny, windowless, electrically heated one that seats two at the most and is located deep in the underground backstage bowels of the building. A Finn would not be impressed. (A good sauna would be wood-burning, more spacious and have access to the outdoors, if not a view over a body of water). No wonder that the other orchestra housed at the Centre, the Helsinki Philharmonic, did not request this kind of a sauna-in-a-closet for their dressing rooms.
Thanks, Mikko!