A young maestro on a global stage

Wearing a pitch-black dress shirt and dark-rimmed spectacles, 26-year-old Tarmo Peltokoski returned for his fifth curtain call before an enthusiastic audience that broke into sustained applause. It was an explosive mainland debut for the Gen Z conductor at the Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, on April 26. Grasping the conductor's score of Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 in G Minor, he held it high above his head before clutching it tightly to his chest. The audience reciprocated with passionate shouts of bravo.

The next day, pictures and videos of Peltokoski filled Chinese social media, but as if nothing had happened, the young star from Vaasa, Finland, appeared at The Peninsula Hong Kong where screens displayed huge posters of him. A special launch event marked the start of his inaugural season as music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, his third music director post since leading the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, first as music director, and then as conductor laureate.

"I'm mortified to be in a room with so many giant heads of myself," he says to enthusiastic attendees, including orchestra principals, board members and key sponsors."I'm trying to bear with it. I'm honored and excited to present our first real season together," says Peltokoski, in casual business attire.

Starting to learn to conduct from the Finnish pedagogue Jorma Panula at barely 14, Peltokoski was dubbed "a talent of the century" by the German newspaper Tagesspiegel. Panula and Peltokoski come from the same region of South Ostrobothnia in Finland, Peltokoski says, and speak the same Finnish dialect.

"He's always been very warm to me. I think we've found some sort of familiarity of spirit," he adds. Most recently, the student visited the teacher in December 2025 at the 95-year-old's home, tucked among trees near Helsinki.

The son of a Filipino nurse and a Finnish engineer and sport shooter, Peltokoski broke new ground when he was named principal guest conductor of the prestigious Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen orchestra, the first person to hold such a position in its history. He was just 21.

In Hong Kong, a new odyssey set off in Asia. For the occasion, the April 27 launch event featured a cinematic video filmed on the top of the harbor-facing Peninsula hotel. Bernhard Fleischer, the orchestra's chief executive, did not want the video to resemble a "going to work" day, so orchestra members changed from dress attire to something smart and casual. In the musical background, the orchestra performed excerpts of Siegfried und Brunnhilde from Richard Wagner's The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure, arranged by Henk de Vlieger, and recorded live by Deutsche Grammophon. Peltokoski, in similar attire, figuratively "landed" on the helicopter pad and walked toward the orchestra members who gathered to meet the conducting star.

"I will lead six programs featuring masterpieces that are especially close to my heart," says Peltokoski about his new season's highly anticipated repertoire, featuring symphonic canons by Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss, and Wagner, whose musical world inspired his childhood dream of becoming a conductor 15 years ago.

Before learning to conduct with Panula, Peltokoski used to play Wagner's operas on his home piano and sing the German lyrics. His teacher trained him through the symphonic repertoire, which required a deep understanding of orchestral instruments, especially the strings. In the new season, music lovers will get a taste of his musicality in Anton Bruckner's Symphony No 7 in E Major and Richard Strauss' Vier letzte Lieder ("Four Last Songs"), with soprano Asmik Grigorian, scheduled for January 2027 in Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Another key highlight includes Gustav Mahler's Symphony No 8 in E-flat Major which marks the orchestra's completion of all of Mahler's symphonies.

Speaking of the upcoming European tour, Peltokoski says "the main dish" will be Wagner's The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure. The touring repertoire also includes Bruckner's Symphony No 4 in E-flat Major, and a newly commissioned Waltz of the Rolling Giants by composer Yao Chen. Peltokoski, no mean pianist himself, will join concert pianist Martin Helmchen in Camille Saint-Saens' The Carnival of the Animals. As a cultural ambassador, the orchestra will travel to eight cities in Spain, Germany, Finland and Austria, sponsored by the China National Arts Fund, making debuts at prestigious venues like Berlin's Berliner Philharmonie, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Vienna's Wiener Konzerthaus, and Musiikkitalo in Helsinki, where Peltokoski once learned how to conduct.

With 40-plus foreign members, the orchestra's Chinese mainland tour is another major highlight, marking the 30th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China. Peltokoski will conduct for three nights in a row at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in April 2027 for his debut before a Beijing audience. A weighty program includes Mahler's Symphony No 2 in C Minor, Resurrection, collaborating with the China NCPA Orchestra and Chorus along with soprano Louise Kwong and contralto Wiebke Lehmkuhl. The Beijing programs also prominently feature Vaughan Williams' Symphony No 4, Esa-Pekka Salonen's Cello Concerto with Finnish cellist Senja Rummukainen, and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde: Prelude and Lohengrin: Prelude.

For the Shanghai audience, the orchestra will join the Music in the Summer Air festival, led by the orchestra's principal guest conductor Yu Long, in 2027. For the entire season, as many as 12 orchestral concerts will showcase collaborations between the orchestra and major Chinese mainland cities.

With almost a full house, the concert on the afternoon of April 26 in Guangzhou was a prelude to upcoming excursions to the mainland. In the first half, Peltokoski and the orchestra collaborated with violinist Leila Josefowicz in the Violin Concerto written for her by renowned Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen.

In a front-row seat, Salonen himself listened to the program, before taking the stage and thanking the overjoyed audience. Also a student of Jorma Panula, Salonen has taught Peltokoski in conducting master classes. "I'm a big fan of Tarmo," Salonen told attendees at a salon event at the concert hall. "He's a very interesting, thoughtful musician. And he's so young. What we are hearing now is already very, very good, but I cannot even imagine what it will be like 20 years from now."

In the second half, Salonen listened on, as Peltokoski led the orchestra in Shostakovich's Symphony No 11, The Year 1905. With his baton, Peltokoski built up the electrifying tension in the one-hour acoustic tragedy, gesturing like an Olympic fencer, bending and lunging. In the words of an orchestra member, it was an emotionally charged journey "from simmering chill to burning fire".

"His baton direction was meticulously precise right from the start," said Liu Zitong, a conducting student from Shanghai.

"This live performance was even more stirring than the recordings we've heard," said Fang Taozhi, 18, and Wu Anyi, 17, two local students who came together.

Xu Nuo, an engineer from Xi'an, wore a commemorative brooch to the concert to show her love for music. "I was moved to tears in several movements. The orchestra conveyed something indescribably depressing but touching. The final 40 seconds of the echoes simply seemed eternal," she said.

"When someone is so convincing, with a mind so deep, sharing knowledge that requires years and years of studying, you completely forget that he is actually 26," said Lorenzo Iosco, chairman of the artistic committee and associate principal bass clarinet of the orchestra. "It's just extraordinary, and this is just the beginning," he added.

Back in The Peninsula Hong Kong and surrounded by huge posters of his son, Peltokoski's father, Raine, is picked out of the crowd. "As a boy, he loved music. He just loved music. But he was — one word: shy. And it's hard to believe today," he says.

The author is a freelance writer for China Daily.