Finnish conductor pays to save national youth orchestra
OrchestrasThe conductor Mikko Franck has donated 75,000 Euros to enable Vivo, Finland’s only national youth symphony orchestra, to function until the end of the year.
Mikko told the national broadcaster YLE he was doing it because the orchestra had given him his first experience as a player. ‘ I gained experience playing, but I also met like-minded young people from different parts of Finland,’ he said. ‘You can’t be lulled into the fact that Finland is a wonderland of music forever and ever, but you have to work (for it) constantly.’
Good man! Well said!
Bravo, Maestro! Youth orchestras are absolutely critical, and a formative experience for so many of us.
Anyone else shocked that a country like Finland that is affluent, very well-educated, and produces a stream of talented musicians can’t support one national youth orchestra without this bailout? How did that happen?
Right — where is all of the financial largesse that European governments are supposedly so keen to shower on deserving cultural organizations? Enquiring minds want to know …
Before we paid taxes for healthcare, school, culture and so on. Now we pay the same amount of taxes, but private initiative is more and more needed to achieve the same level of goods. Where does the money goes? Nobody knows.
There are several youth orchestras (not to mention full professional symphony orchestras) sponsored through public funding.
But Russia didn’t care how many symphony orchestras (or violins) Ukraine had… did they?
This is the sad reality. In state budgets you can easily find more urgent — even existential? — issues. Politicians are humans after all.
Grazie, Mikko Franck! Bravo, very generous from you.
A fantastic conductor deserving more recognition.