Hannu Lintu

Conductor

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“Lintu conducted with such an impassioned and longsighted grasp of the work’s momentum. A revelatory evening of fierce energies and hallowed spaces.”
(The Times)

Chief Conductor: Finnish National Opera

With a “scrupulous ear for instrumental color and blend” (Washington Post) and bringing “a distinctive dynamism to the podium” (Baltimore Sun), Hannu Lintu begins his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. The appointment follows a series of hugely successful collaborations with the company – including Tristan und Isolde in 2016, Sibelius’s Kullervo in 2017, Berg’s Wozzeck in 2019 and Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in 2020 – and reflects Lintu’s shifting focus into the field of opera. The upcoming season commences with Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. Future productions will include the majority of the house’s rescheduled Ring Cycle which will recommence with Die Walküre in Autumn 2022.

Lintu recently completed his eighth and final season as the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor. Highlights included Schumann’s Faust Szenen, Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust and the second-ever FRSO Festival – devoted in 2019 to new and large-scale works by national composer Magnus Lindberg.

In the upcoming 2021/22 season, Lintu makes his highly anticipated debut with Opéra national de Paris, conducting Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer. Lintu also regularly conducts at the Savonlinna Festival, most recently for productions of Verdi’s Otello (2018) and Sallinen’s Kullervo (in 2017, as part of Finland’s centenary celebrations).

Guest highlights of the 2021/22 season include returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, Gulbenkian Orchestra, and Tampere Philharmonic. Lintu also guest conducts the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Russian National Philharmonic Orchestra, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

Recent engagements include debuts with the Chicago and Boston symphony orchestras, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich and returns to the Baltimore, St Louis and Cincinnati symphony orchestras, New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra and NDR Elbphilharmonie.

Lintu has made several recordings for Ondine, BIS, Naxos, Avie and Hyperion; recent releases include the complete Beethoven Piano Concertos with Stephen Hough, Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten and Violin Concerto with Leila Josefowicz, Lutoslawski’s Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4 and Nos. 2 & 3 and works by Kaija Saariaho with Gerald Finley and Xavier de Maistre, all of which feature Lintu’s principal recording partner, the FRSO.

Lintu has received several accolades for his recordings, including two ICMA awards for Bartók’s Violin Concertos with Christian Tetzlaff (2019) and works by Sibelius featuring Anne Sofie von Otter (2018), a 2021 GRAMMY nomination in the Best Orchestral Performance category for his recording of Lutoslawski’s Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3, a 2011 GRAMMY nomination for Best Opera CD (Rautavaara’s Kaivos), and Gramophone Award nominations for his recordings of Enescu’s Symphony No.2 with the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra and the Violin Concertos of Sibelius and Thomas Adès with Augustin Hadelich and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Lintu studied cello and piano at the Sibelius Academy, where he later studied conducting with Jorma Panula. He participated in masterclasses with Myung-Whun Chung at the L’Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, and took first prize at the Nordic Conducting Competition in Bergen in 1994.

Hannu Lintu - Lindberg: Feria (excerpt) © Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra / Deutsche Welle

Hannu Lintu - Enescu: Symphony No.2 (excerpt) © Ondine

“Lintu’s reading fully balanced the Concerto’s kaleidoscopic sound world with Bartók’s innate conception of musical structure. The score’s many delicate gestures – sensitively realized throughout – served larger, dramatic ends. The result was a dazzling Concerto for Orchestra performance: while still a brilliant showpiece, Thursday’s performance also packed a surprising degree of seething emotional power.”

(Boston Classical Review, November 2018)

“Lintu is a superstar in the Sibelius world these days. His video recordings of all seven of the composer’s symphonies with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra can be seen and heard on cable television and elsewhere. Still, his rendition of the Symphony No. 2 in D with the NACO demonstrated the truism that even the best recordings pale beside the experience of a good live performance.”

(Classical Voice North America, November 2017)

“Lintu’s Tapiola does indeed settle into one of the finest performances on record, reconciling the obvious with the mysterious, casting everything in various shades of darkness until it snaps or roars outwards, and, in the culminating shift to the major, equalling Leif Segerstam’s magical flooding of the soundscape with glistening, sideways forest light.”

(Gramophone, November 2017)

“No other conductor – including several distinguished Sibelians – I have heard in this music has been quite so willing to show what makes [Kullervo] so original. Where others have attempted to connect it to the main, canonic body of Sibelius’s output, Lintu shows how it stands apart, and how if the composer had continued in this vein he might have become a sort of Finnish Bartók … A conductor given to big gestures, he drew a performance of gripping sweep, and playing of surging, full-blooded warmth.”

(John Allison, Opera Magazine, May 2017)

“At an hour long, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8 needs an overarching vision to bring it all together. Lintu had no problem providing a clear-eyed sober view. It received an almost flawless performance from Lintu and the orchestra. Lintu handled the Classical beauties of Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante with grace and ease, in a fine prelude to the epic sorrows of the Shostakovich.”

(Sarah Bryan Miller, St Louis Post-Dispatch, April 2015)

“Guest conducting the Cleveland Orchestra… Lintu made sure his name is one listeners will remember. Leading well-known works by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, Lintu seized on elements of drama and excitement to craft truly distinguished performances fuelled by seemingly boundless reserves of vitality.”

(Zachary Lewis, The Plain Dealer, January 2015)