On May 27th and 28th Sasha Mäkilä and the Helsinki Metropolitan Orchestra will perform Leevi Madetoja’s 1st symphony in its original 1916 guise for the first time in a hundred years. The composer made several changes to his first symphony in 1923 when he performed it again with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, but maestro Mäkilä has painstakingly restored the earlier version from the original hand written orchestra parts.
This early version is a part of a critical edition prepared by maestro Mäkilä which, when completed, will present three distinct versions of the symphony – the original version of 1916, the re-orchestrated version of 1923, and the shortened version from the year 1943 when the composer sold the work to the music publishing company Fazer.