Filipino Finnish is new music director of HK Philharmonic
When the new season of the Hong Kong Philharmonic (HK Phil) opens Sept. 5 to Sept. 6 at the Hong Kong Cultural Center, opening night audiences will be surprised that the new music director is only 24 and of Filipino Finnish parentage.
Tarmo Peltokoski said he was thrilled to be named the ninth and the youngest music director of HK Phil.
“After being highly impressed by the orchestra last year, I knew this would be a long-lasting relationship. The HK Phil is surely one of the absolute top orchestras in Asia. I am very much looking forward to lots of inspiring music-making with the brilliant HK Phil musicians in the years to come,” he added.
Peltokoski will hold the music director role for a four-year term, after serving as music director designate during the 2025/26 season. He succeeds outgoing music director Jaap van Zweden who is also leaving the New York Philharmonic.
HK Phil is not Peltokoski’s only turf as conductor. He is also music and artistic director of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, principal guest conductor of Rotterdam Philharmonisch Orkest and music director designate of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse in France.
Peltokoski, then only 19, made his Philippine debut in 2019 as guest conductor of the Manila Symphony Orchestra (MSO) with then 15-year-old soloist Jeanne Marquez. A program of a Sibelius violin concerto and Beethoven’s Fifth led to a rousing standing ovation for the young conducting sensation.
A 2019 review from the Inquirer was the only credential he had when he set out to conquer Europe three years later.
At age 19 before his Philippine debut, Peltokoski has already conducted the Sofia Philharmonic (Bulgaria), Janácek Philharmonic (Ostrava, Czech Republic) and South Denmark Philharmonic.
In his latest engagement, a Berlin newspaper had hailed him as the “talent of the century.”
His debuts with the National Symphony in Washington DC and the LA Philharmonic were described as “electrifying.”
‘Fantastic’
A winner of the 2023 Opus Klassik Young Talent of the Year award, Peltokoski reinforced his world-class status when he signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon (DG), which released his DG debut album last May. It consisted of Mozart’s Symphonies Nos. 35 “Haffner,” 36 “Linz” and 40, recorded with The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.
His new HK Phil post was announced July 5 and July 6 at the Hong Kong Cultural Center (HKCC) where a contract signing took place.
Willie Aquino, a Filipino piano pedagogue and subscriber of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (PPO), was in the audience during Peltokoski’s HK Phil concert in the first week of July.
He reported: “A fabulous concert by star Filipino-Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski! I was seated just behind the orchestra and so I saw all his movements and gestures which inspired the orchestra to play magnificently. His dynamics were widely varied and intense. You could feel his heart and passion. At times, he conducted with just his head, eyes or eyebrows. He had the Mahler Symphony No. 5 memorized, conducted without the score. What a fantastic conductor!”
Peltokoski is not the first conductor with Filipino roots to work with HK Phil. The late violinist and PPO and MSO conductor Basilio Manalo served as associate concertmaster of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in 1980, performing under Maestro Ling Tung.
A frequent soloist in the ’80s and ’90s was pianist Cecile Licad, who debuted with the HK Phil in the Hong Kong Arts Festival in the ’80s, performing Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 and later Chopin No. 1 to great reviews.
Licad turned down an invitation to judge in the Chopin Competition in the ’90s as the jury work fell on the day of her HK Phil engagement performing Chopin No. 1.
In 2017, one of the appointed assistant conductors of HK Phil with a series of special concerts at the HKCC was conductor Gerard Salonga, who is now with the Malaysia Philharmonic Orchestra.
Loves adobo
After his Manila debut, Peltokoski encountered German cellist Alban Gerhardt in a concert with Orquestra de Valencia in Spain.
Gerhardt recalled after his first encounter with Peltokoski: “When I started playing the cello publicly some 35 years ago, some of the conductors could have been my grandparents. I had to get slowly used to not being the youngest on stage anymore. But yesterday I played a concert with the Orquestra de Valencia and there the brilliant Tarmo Peltokoski was younger than my son. It was a memorable concert.”
Gerhardt performed with Licad and the PPO in 2009.
The other star soloists of Peltokoski include the now celebrated pianist Yuja Wang and Tchaikovsky gold medalist Viktoria Mullova, among others.
The world’s youngest star conductor came from mixed Filipino Finnish parentage. His father is Raine Peltokoski from Vaasa, Finland, and his mother is Flor Saulon Peltokoski from Davao City.
From Vaasa, they moved to Helsinki when Tarmo was 16 to study at the Helsinki Conservatory and then at the Sibelius Academy.
Both his parents are nonmusicians, but Peltokoski’s retired grandmother was a singer and teacher. She played the piano accompanying her voice students.
His Filipino mother says he still eats rice to this day and loves Filipino food like adobo and spring rolls.
Three rules
His conducting journey includes his first lessons in the conductor’s art when he was 14 from the legendary Finnish teacher Jorma Panula, with more studies in conducting and piano four years later at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He joined Sakari Oramo’s conducting class soon after.
Peltokoski’s mentors also include Hannu Lintu, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Esa-Pekka Salonen, whose professional guidance has complemented his own deep study of the operatic and symphonic repertoire.
He admitted that as an 11-year-old boy, he was inspired to take up conducting by the life-changing experience of discovering Daniel Barenboim’s recording of Wagner’s “Ring.”
“What I’m doing now started with me going insane when I heard Wagner at the age of 11,” he said. “That’s where my interest in conducting began. Everything has grown from there.”
In my last interview with him after his Rotterdam Philharmonic engagements, he gave us a clue on what it takes to be a good conductor. “There are only three rules,” he told me. “Study scores, study scores and study scores. Of course, it doesn’t end there. One also has to conduct and rehearse well.”
By Pablo A. Tariman
Tarmo Peltokoski will lead the HK Phil in its season opening concert on Sept. 5 and Sept. 6, in a program consisting of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, WAB 109 and Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in D Minor, op. 47 with Daniel Lozakovich as soloist.
