Helsinki names Israeli principal

Helsinki names Israeli principal

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norman lebrecht

September 05, 2017

The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra has hired Sivan Magen as principal harp.

Magen is presently a faculty member of the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.

He will have to learn Finnish which, like Hebrew, is an acquired taste.

 

Comments

  • Pirkko says:

    Finnish is an easy language to learn. I became fluent in two years.

  • Last time I traveled to Finland, I read a travel guide about this great country. In the paragraph about its language, the first sentence was: Don’t ever try to learn Finnish, you just can’t. Stick to the most basic terms like “hello”, “thank you” or “good bye”, if you want to be nice to the local people.

    Considering how different Finnish is from English, I was really impressed by how good the school kids there spoke English. In Helsinki, I asked a little boy for directions, and he was totally fluent. No wonder Finnish kids always top the Pisa Test.

  • Luigi Nonono says:

    It seems to suggest that he found it too difficult to maintain himself solely by concert performing as a harpist, which is tragic, though he mainly seemed to limit himself to chamber music engagements.

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