G.P.

Friday the 13th, the final day of the master class! Well, despite the ominous date everything went fine! I enjoyed some beautiful performances in the final orchestra rehearsal - especially Oleg Soldatov's interpretation of Don Juan by Richard Strauss! He is already an experienced conductor who gets what he wants from the orchestra. Still he is ambitious and curious enough to come to master classes to learn more! I have high respect for him!

Oleg Soldatov conducting Don Juan

After the rehearsal we gave roses to the orchestra players to thank them for the good work. They were a fantastic master class orchestra with a friendly but professional attitude. I am sure every participant got an honest evaluation of their skills just by listening how the orchestra played under their direction.

Maestro Simonov rehearsing

After that we took a bus ride to Gödöllö, to a beautiful palace where the final concert was to take place. The orchestra played in open air, in less than ideal circumstances. Nevertheless the result was good! Maestro Simonov demonstrated his virtuosity in preparing the Mendelssohn violin concerto for concert with barely more than a run-through of the piece. The rest of the program was from our master class repertoire.

Open air concert in Gödöllö

Maestro Simonov's conducting was really pleasurable to watch even though the orchestra's power was reduced without proper acoustics. When the evening got darker they also had to compete with birdsong! Afterwards we had a nice coctail party and paid a visit to one of the three surviving baroque theaters in Europe, located inside the palace and recently restored.

Jolly master class participants after the concert

The partying continued late that night in a sentimental mood. After all, it is so hard to let go of your new friends and colleagues after working so hard side by side for ten days!

Heikki Seppänen gets his diploma

The official closing of the master class was held on Saturday morning. We were served a fantastic meal with good wine and people gave speeches in emotional state... We also got our master class diplomas, and maestro Simonov would speak briefly about every participant, evaluating their progress and giving advice for the future - all this in highly encouraging and poetic manner. Besides the diploma, everyone got a letter of advice from maestro, as well as a photo of all the participants with their contacts, and a new baton with our name inscribed onto it! We also got a DVD of our orchestra rehearsals and maestro Simonov's first rehearsal before the master class started!

After the lunch it was time for emotional goodbyes... Maestro Simonov encouraged all the participants to keep in touch with each other and help each other in the profession. Needlessly, I would say, since everyone seemed to have made great friends during the master class!

Today it became obvious how hard work conducting is: I woke up early to study Stravinsky Apollon Musagete for the orchestra session - which went very well actually - and after that I had to gather myself to study Ravel La Valse and conduct it with the pianists.

Maja at the piano session

At the break in our piano session maestro Simonov showed me his notes from our first meeting 3 years ago in St Petersburg. It is incredible how organized he is - I remember him writing on his laptop during that master class, but I never would have believed that he has saved all he wrote and was able to dig it out to show it to me today. Apparently he makes a file about every person he is teaching!

Anyway, the comments he made back then were really harsh - his impression of me after the first lesson must have been very bad. On the second day he wrote something positive too: "made progress", "feels the music"... Now, after this master class I will get a couple of pages of notes from these 10 days. That should be interesting!