©Photo: Veikko Kähkönen

Dalia Stasevska

Conductor

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“The star of the evening was conductor Dalia Stasevska”
(Aamulehti)

Chief Conductor: Lahti Symphony Orchestra
Principal Guest Conductor: BBC Symphony Orchestra

Dalia Stasevska’s charismatic and dynamic musicianship has established her as a conductor of exceptional versatility. Chief Conductor of Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Artistic Director to the International Sibelius Festival, Dalia also holds the post of Principal Guest Conductor to the BBC Symphony Orchestra. She has made several appearances at the BBC Proms and conducts the Last Night of the Proms in 2022. Together with BBC Symphony Orchestra, they opened the 2021 Edinburgh International Festival.

The 2022/23 season sees Dalia conducting orchestras such as Chicago, Cincinnati, San Francisco and Toronto symphony orchestras, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra Washington. She will return to New York Philharmonic, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and to Los Angeles Philharmonic following her successful Hollywood Bowl debut in summer 2022. She also appears with Netherlands Radio Philharmonic at the Concertgebouw Hall, Amsterdam, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg.

Mendelssohn: Symphony No.4, Op.90 © Helskini Philharmonic

In summer 2022 she toured to Germany with BBC Symphony Orchestra making her debut at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and in autumn 2022 they embark on a six-concert tour to Japan with soloists Sol Gabetta, Nicola Benedetti and Roderick Williams. In spring 2023 Dalia and BBC Symphony Orchestra collaborate on a project with Grégoire Pont at the Barbican Centre entitled Our Precious Planet. Performing works of living composers is a core part of Dalia’s programming and with Lahti Symphony Orchestra they present works by Missy Mazzoli, Andrew Norman, Thomas Adès, Helen Grime, Kaija Saariaho and Outi Tarkianen to name a few. Recent highlights include Baltimore and Seattle symphonies orchestras, Orchestre National de France, returns to Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, NAC Orchestra, and the opening of the Tongyeong Festival.

A passionate opera conductor, Dalia debuts at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival this season with a revival of the iconic Peter Halls production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In previous seasons she returned to the Finnish National Opera and Ballet to conduct a double bill of Poulenc’s La voix humane and Weill’s Songs with Karita Mattila, and to Norske Opera to conduct Madama Butterfly and Lucia di Lammermoor. Other productions include Don Giovanni with Kungliga Opera Stockholm, directed by Ole Anders Tandberg, Eugene Onegin at the Opéra de Toulon, Cunning Little Vixen with Finnish National Opera and Sebastian Fagerlund’s Höstsonaten at the 2018 Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm, featuring Anne-Sofie von Otter.

Dalia originally studied as a violinist and composer at the Tampere Conservatoire and violin, viola and conducting at the Sibelius Academy. As a conductor her teachers include Jorma Panula and Leif Segerstam. She was bestowed the Order of Princess Olga of the III degree by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in October 2020 for her significant personal contribution to the development of international cooperation, strengthening the prestige of Ukraine internationally and popularisation of its historical and cultural heritage. In December 2018, she had the honour of conducting the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in Stockholm. Dalia was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor Award in 2020.

HarrisonParrott represents Dalia Stasevska for worldwide general management.

Dalia Stasevska - Magnus Lindberg: Two Episodes © Finnish Radio SO (2016 Helsinki Festival)

Kodaly: Dances of Galanta (excerpt) © Gothenburg Symphony

“She was thrilling to watch and ignited the orchestra with sheer force of personality, making for a very exciting performance.”

The Arts Desk, July 2022

“This is a conductor who can elicit the finest nuances with her precise directing, the softest moments often preceding great sweeps of her arms as she gathers in all the musicians while equally precisely bringing out one or another group.”

(5*, Bachtrack, March 2022)

“Stasevska is an important talent. Throughout the program, her time-keeping was rock solid, her cues impeccable, her musical understanding and commitment to these pieces unwavering.”

(Musical America, October 2021)

“Stasevska led what might have been the finest performance this piece has ever had.”

(New York Classical Review, October 2021)

“The best was saved until last. Dalia Stasevska, the young Finnish conductor on the podium, had until this point been content to guide things with skilful modesty. Now suddenly she came alive, shaping a performance of Sibelius’s Second Symphony that had me absolutely on the edge of my seat. The sheer urgency of the music, the way it has to struggle against its own tendency to disintegration and find a path to heroic affirmation has rarely seemed so thrilling.”

(The Telegraph, July 2021)

“Stasevska’s pacing was masterly – a coiled spring of a performance to push the current uncertainties of the music world from our minds.”

(The Guardian, July 2021)

“Stasevska made the intensity ignite immediately. The performance was painted with a large brush, without slipping out of precision. The sound was great and full-bodied. I remember thinking earlier that Stasevska has a special ability to build extremely long phrases. This was emphasized in the interpretation of Fantasy.”

(Helsingin Sanomat, Sonja Saarikoski, November 2020)

“There is peace in Stasevska’s leading. It also has the exceptional ability to take each work as it is, on its own terms. This is by no means self-evident. It is often easy to hear which work is closest to the conductor himself. Now I can’t say. Stasevska directed all the concert works as if it were just this.”

(Helsingin Sanomat, Sonja Saarikoski, November 2020)

“Stasevska’s abundant talents delivered one of the best performances of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony I’ve heard: fresh, clear, urgent, completely faithful to the score and the composer’s intent. Tempi were bracing and balletic. The 5/4 second movement glided through the hall with ballroom grace and she kept driving the impulsion forward throughout the sobbing finale, where so many conductors tend to drag their feet.”

(Natasha Gauthier, Artsfile, October 2019)

“She has the real conductor’s gift of establishing pin-drop silence and total concentration in a hall filled with 5,000 people, and there’s a guilelessness and total sincerity in her conducting which is very winning.”

(Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph, August 2019)

“By the end, laurels won, the packed audience hungry for more, she had the orchestra right behind her, flying triumphant. This was an auspicious Proms debut, expectant and adrenalin-charged.”

(Ateş Orga, Classical Source, August 2019)

“Her international reputation is strongly growing, and after seeing her in concert it is not hard to understand why. She is bursting with musical knowledge and energy.”

(Hufvudstadsbladet, September 18)

“She is full of energy and conducted the chorus with power and control.”

(NORDJYSKE, May 18)

“She’s a real find, making her UK debut with an orchestra clearly having a ball”

(Arts Desk, April 2018)

“Stasevska knows how to shout and to whisper. […] From the very beginning it was clear that her approach never sees classical music as a ‘charming entertainment’. Instead she comes across as a fully mature artist whose interpretations have real power and vision. She conducts with immense intensity and control, but at the same time has understanding for small nuances. […] Let us follow Stasevska’s career very attentively and hopefully for a long time!”

(Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, 2015)

“The star of the evening was conductor Dalia Stasevska. She made Finnish National Opera’s orchestra sound full with rich colours.”

(Aamulehti, 2015)

“Dalia Stasevska conducted with dedication. From the very beginning, she almost seemed to be an inseparable part of Janáček’s music, its freshness and naturalness.”

(Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, 2015)

“A young, creative and energetic Dalia Stasevska created a fresh and alive, but at the same time very sensitive interpretation. Her grip to the music was rhythmic, insightful and fresh. Many details emerged from the orchestra which often remain unheard in the overall texture of other interpretations. […] From the very opening bars, the music sounded soft and sweet, the piani in the Lacrimosa were touchingly quiet, like a soft comforting touch of fingertips. She showed the same delicacy in the handling of the choir. Stasevska lets fortes ring out for a moment, only to quickly pull them back, to give space to the next one. Mozart’s rich tapestry sparkled and lived like in a kaleidoscope.”

(Itä-Savo, 2015)