The festival, which was canceled last year, this year offers both live music and streamed conversations from various places around the Baltic Sea.
- There is no direct translation between music and words really, but the idea was from the beginning to create a forum for the culture of the Baltic Sea countries, says conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Baltic Sea cooperation
Together with the conductor and music director of the Mariiskij Theater in St. Petersburg, Valery Gergiev and Berwaldhallen's then art gallery director Michael Tydén, they started the festival as a model of how a collaboration between the countries around the Baltic Sea could work.
Today, the Baltic Sea Festival is one of Europe's largest and leading classical music festivals with artists, orchestras and conductors from the top layers of the Baltic Sea region.
- Dialogue is the key to somehow being able to handle these major challenges, both politically and on the environmental side, and when we started the festival, it was a completely different political situation here around the Baltic Sea, says Esa-Pekka Salonen and continues:
- It was chaotic but still a feeling that everything was open and possible.
Unfortunately, that feeling no longer exists in the same way, but the cultural contacts between the countries work, he says.
"Like coming home"
Esa-Pekka Salonen, which opens the festival with a large opening concert together with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, was during the years 1984-1995 chief conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
According to him, it is a dear reunion to return to the festival and Berwaldhallen.
- I am very happy that the festival is developing and that it still exists.
And that there are new people who take the concept further.
At the same time, I am also very happy to reconnect with the Radio Symphony Orchestra, which was my orchestra.
When I come here, it's like coming home, he says.
The Baltic Sea Festival takes place between 9 - 12 September and can be seen on both Berwaldhallen's website and in SR.