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Finnish cinema is enjoying a major boom: the higher degree of professionalism and the growing rate of new releases are paying dividends in bigger box-office figures. In the process, music is regaining its status as part of the total experience, and the severed link between directors and composers is being restored again.

Finnish arts policy attracts attention and interest internationally because of its remarkable results. Per capita, Finland has produced an astounding number of world-class conductors, composers and instrumentalists. Why is this? What is the secret behind this success?

"You are born with a dramatic pulse, with dramatic thinking, and that's that. I've written now about two-thirds, so I call it a marathon," says composer Aulis Sallinen, whose new opera King Lear will be premiered at the Finnish National Opera on 15 September, 2000.

In a book entitled Mielen maisemat ja musiikki (Landscapes of the Mind and Music) Kari Kurkela addresses the problems encountered by the child in learning to play a musical instrument in the light of psychoanalysis and mythology. Lively interaction between training in sensitivity and the constructive channelling of aggression is, he claims, important: so important in fact that without these elements of creativity the child's playing will be reduced to little more than "potty training".

Paavo Berglund, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Osmo Vänskä, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Simon Rattle, and Neeme Järvi are today's great Sibelius conductors, carrying on a tradition that began with Robert Kajanus and Sir Thomas Beecham. What are their thoughts on the Finnish composer?

The Estonian song festival is a concept whose history and significance cannot be assessed with conventional artistic criteria. Since the last century, the song festivals organized in Tallinn have been a demonstration of Estonian culture and national spirit whose power has been strongest at crucial turning points in the nations history. On the other hand, they have also served as a showcase for a rich and original culture of singing and as a demonstration of a rare and heartfelt musical togetherness.

Estonia is near Finland, but Estonian and Finnish contemporary music differ considerably from one another. Composer Kalevi Aho has acquainted himself with Estonian music for instance at Estonian contemporary music seminars in 1995 and 1997 and observed that Estonian composers cannot be bracketed into the same categories as their Finnish colleagues.

Flying home from Vienna in June 1997, Antti Siirala had more than the usual collection of souvenirs in his hand luggage: the promise of a Bösendorfer grand piano! This was one of the rewards for winning the tenth International Beethoven Piano Competition, in addition to a money prize and a string of concert fixtures.

"It may sound a bit crazy, but I actually think of myself more as a composer than a conductor. It just so happens that the conducting side has outweighed the composing," says Esa-Pekka Salonen in 1998.