For his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in February 2018, Dima Slobodeniouk conducted works by Russian and Finnish composers. A very characteristic programme, geographically speaking, as the musician was born in Moscow and received his training as a conductor in Helsinki. The performance was also exciting insofar as the Philharmoniker had only ever played Sibelius’s tone poem Tapiola once before in their long history and Prokofiev’s Second Symphony was a work they had never previously performed. Dima Slobodeniouk, who has worked with many major international ensembles, became artistic director of Sinfonia Lahti in Finland in 2016/2017 and of the Sibelius Festival, also in Lahti. In this interval feature, he is interviewed by the Philharmoniker’s principal flute, Emmanuel Pahud.

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