Around the Music Festival

The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra has announced that young Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski will be its next Music Director. Peltokoski will serve a four-year term beginning with the 2026/2027 season, succeeding Jaap van Zweden, who has held the position since 2012 and will retire at the end of the 2023/2024 season.

Peltokoski was born in Helsinki and is 24 years old. Half Filipino and half Finnish, he entered the Sibelius Academy of Music at the age of 14, where he studied with the renowned teacher Jorma Panula. He made his conducting debut in 2020 with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Peltokoski is one of the Finnish conductors who has become a major force in the conducting world, along with Klaus Mäkelä. From the 2023/2024 season, he will serve as Music Director and Artistic Director of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, and from the 2024/2025 season, he will also serve as Music Director of the Orchestre National du Capitole in Toulouse, France. He is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Orchestra.

He made his debut with the Hong Kong Philharmonic last year, and will be making his second guest appearance with the orchestra on July 5 and 6. He will be conducting Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 with SeongJin Cho as soloist.


PHOTO：Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra