“A direction that was both highly precise and free” in Palma de Mallorca

Pietari Inkinen’s concert with the Orquestra Simfònica de Balears at the Auditorium de Palma made a strong impression on the Spanish press.

The programme brought together Maurice Ravel’s “Ma mère l’Oye”, Frank Martin’s Violin Concerto with Frank Peter Zimmermann, and Béla Bartók’s “Concerto for Orchestra”. Critics highlighted Inkinen’s authority on the podium, his refined attention to orchestral colour and detail, and the remarkable response he drew from the orchestra.

Reviewers praised the transparency and atmosphere of his Ravel, the precision and balance of his Bartók, and the sense of both control and freedom in his conducting. Several critics also singled out the orchestra’s outstanding form under Inkinen’s direction, with OK Baleares describing the evening as a moment in which the Orquestra Simfònica de Balears reached “a kind of sonic Olympus”.

Read the press quotes below:

“This exercise in complicity between the protagonists also had a name: Pietari Inkinen, the prestigious Finnish conductor, whose resume boasts, among other achievements, conducting Wagner’s Ring Cycle in Bayreuth in 2023, and who drew out the full potential of the orchestra. So much so, that the musicians gave him a warm and resounding ovation as he left the stage.

This was not the first piece of the evening. The prelude, perhaps unnecessary because the program was already quite packed, was by Maurice Ravel, with the five pieces from Ma mere Oye. An orchestral delicacy born from a simple piano composition, whose origin is known to almost everyone, which served to complete a survey of the different ways of understanding music among contemporaries of the 20th century.

On this occasion, and this is also unusual, the final segment of the program was the one that generated the most anticipation. And with good reason. Concerto for orchestra Sz 116, by Béla Bartók, It is a composition of exceptional characteristics, to the point that it would not be at all inaccurate or exaggerated to call it monumental. Bartók, knowing that his life had a very near expiration date, decided to review his existence. memento mori The music is also unusual, due to its palindromic structure and five movements. The second movement is undoubtedly the most outstanding, showcasing the skill of almost all the instruments in the ensemble. Giuoco delle coppie, They call it that, and that’s the name of the movement. An intricate interplay where the instruments play in pairs, a fact that, once again, provides ample material for discussion and highlights the excellence of the various performers. The musicians of the Symphony, naturally, didn’t miss the opportunity.”
J.A. Mendiola, Arabalears

“At the fifth subscription concert at the Auditorium, the young Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen joined forces with German star violinist Hans Peter Zimmermann, presenting a distinguished program that brought together Maurice Ravel’s orchestral suite Ma Mère l’Oye, Frank Martin’s Violin Concerto, and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra in a radiant performance.
Ranked among the top ten conductors of the international elite in 2025 for his especially authentic approach to the repertoire, and even counted among the top five Wagner conductors, Inkinen opened the evening with Maurice Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye, unfolding its enchanted fairy-tale world. Conducting without a baton, his expressive hands alone were enough to draw from the orchestra, in splendid form, the delicate shimmer of the strings, the refined woodwind passages, and the charmingly placed accents of the percussion. What emerged was a nostalgic journey into childhood, an atmospheric world shaped by a child’s perception of a vanished realm, much as the composer may have envisioned it when orchestrating this work originally written for piano.”
Martin H. Müller, Mallorca Magazine

“Rating: * * * *½
Yes – and this is not merely a play on words -because the concert as a whole was very successful, but Bartók’s ‘Concerto for Orchestra’ exceeded all expectations.

But let us take things step by step. With Ravel’s ‘Ma mère l’oye’, it was already possible to sense that we were in the presence of a very accomplished conductor, deeply interested in nuance, asking each section and each individual musician for the sound that suited the music best at every moment. In these five Ravelian miniatures, beyond attention to detail, what truly matters is the whole – that “making the air palpable” the Impressionists spoke of. Particularly fine was ‘Petit Poucet’, lost in the forest while the birds eat his breadcrumbs.

Next came a Violin Concerto of recent vintage, presented here as a first performance. Especially interesting was the third movement, in which the composer Frank Martin reveals his craft, after two movements of lesser weight. The violinist Frank Zimmermann, already known to local audiences from his performance of the Mendelssohn Concerto with the orchestra some years ago, delivered a bold reading of the score, one that certainly deserves a second hearing. That said, he truly shone in the two encores he graciously offered at the audience’s request: a Schubert and a Bach. Ending with the Master is always a good idea.

And then, in the second half, came the whirlwind, the splendour, the genius, embodied in that unclassifiable work Bartók himself titled ‘Concerto for Orchestra’, in which the music moves from the few elegiac moments to vibrant and majestic ones, always with exquisite elegance. In this work – commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at a time when the composer had just been diagnosed with leukemia – all the sonic and thematic possibilities of the period unfold: elements of folk music, melodies by other composers, rhythmic extravagances – everything, but fused and combined in a brilliant way.

And this is where Pietari Inkinen enters the picture, a conductor whom I had personally encountered in Bayreuth, conducting what has so far been the most recent production of ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’. There are many differences between Wagner and Bartók, but truly understanding one allows you to approach the other with confidence. Inkinen, wise on the podium, conducted this work impeccably, without exaggerating the sonic elements, yet keeping them perfectly balanced, so that the rich accompaniments never overwhelmed the melody while remaining an integral part of it. In short, a direction that was both highly precise and free at the same time, and with which one can only fully agree. A sheer delight, indeed.”
Pere Estelrich i Massutí, Diario de Mallorca

“Frank Peter Zimmermann, the young Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen, and the Balearic Symphony Orchestra combined professionalism and dedication, but brand-new scores also require a period of latency and repose.”
“Pietari Inkinen is the latest in a long line of Finnish conductors to step into the spotlight. The main attraction of the evening was Béla Bartók’s Concerto SZ 116, better known as the Concerto for Orchestra, a work that allows the various sections of the symphonic ensemble to shine. The young Scandinavian knows the score inside out and barely glanced at the music stand. The bassoons sounded exquisite at the opening of the famous Gioco delle coppie in the second movement, and no less playful was the Lehár–Shostakovich parody in the roguish Intermezzo interrotto—surely the best-known passage of this unclassifiable orchestral collage, which intersperses Magyar rhythms with symphonic irreverence.

The icing on the cake on this occasion did not close the concert but, on the contrary, opened it. The orchestral version of Ma mère l’oye (Mother Goose), with which Inkinen and the Simfònica began the evening, turned out to be a dessert served in advance. Seven double basses, celesta, glockenspiel, English horn, and a wide array of percussion make this brief symphonic suite one of Maurice Ravel’s most exquisite orchestral creations. Five pieces for piano four hands revisited to delight any orchestra worth its salt. Inkinen and his musicians polished every instrumental incision, and the Simfònica rose to the level of a major European orchestra, blending the dreamlike worlds of Sleeping Beauty, Le petit poucet, The Empress of the Pagodas, and Beauty and the Beast. Yet, as immediately became clear thereafter, twentieth-century music was anything but a fairy tale.”
Joan Estrany, Doce Notas

“There we had the orchestra reinforced, and taking his place on the podium was the Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen, who for the past nine years had served as principal conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, based in Kaiserslautern, in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate. His long experience as music director of a single orchestra made him something more than a mere guest conductor, and he arrived bearing the aura of exceptional versatility – both as a violinist (his original instrument) and as a fully mature conductor. In other words, he stepped onto the podium of the main hall of the Auditorium of Palma with a deep understanding from both sides of the stage. Pietari Inkinen thus came to us already firmly established, and reputedly of considerable international impact.
From the very first moment, his authority was evident, and for that very reason the use – or absence – of the baton was anything but arbitrary. He opened the evening conducting Maurice Ravel’s Ma mère l’oye (1910) with free hands, seeking greater intimacy and expressiveness in order to establish a deeper connection, as well as more fluidity in the lyrical passages. In a sense, one might venture to say that he was exploring Ravel’s own creative mind: starting from the brief suite for piano four hands, the composer almost immediately moved to its orchestral version, and a year later to the creation of a ballet, all driven by the same compositional impulse.
Only afterwards did Inkinen take up the baton in his right hand, which he retained until the end of the evening. First came Frank Martin’s Violin Concerto (1952), with the German violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann as the invited soloist – an artist who, like the Finnish conductor, is blessed with exceptional interpretative qualities. One can easily imagine the constant unspoken exchanges from violinist to violinist, much as happens when a pianist conducts a piano concerto. Here, the baton’s function – according to the canons of the profession – is to provide rhythmic and gestural clarity to the orchestra, and true beauty emerges when the conductor is a profound connoisseur of the symphonic repertoire, as well as the operatic one. This is evidently the case with Pietari Inkinen, and we are well aware of the strong impetus given in recent decades by the Finnish school to refined sensitivity when ascending the podium.
Zimmermann, too, was sublime, guiding his Stradivarius through a concerto that clearly reveals the stylistic inclinations of the Swiss composer Frank Martin, including nuances of his interest in improvisation and his familiarity with elements of dodecaphonic theory during the period in which he was seeking his own musical language – a process that began two decades before the composition of this violin concerto. At the close of the first half, one thing was clear: Inkinen and Zimmermann had already made the fifth subscription concert shine.
Still to come was Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra (1944), a work laden with symbolism and meaning. Let us not forget that we are dealing with a Hungarian composer who fled his homeland to escape Nazism. Bartók composed this work in the midst of the Second World War, hence the inclusion of certain allusions to other musical works. At its New York premiere in 1944, it was widely understood that Bartók had managed to recover from his personal hardships; even Serge Koussevitzky, the conductor, did not hesitate to declare: “This is the most important orchestral work of the last twenty-five years.” Pietari Inkinen, for his part, deployed his extraordinary power of persuasion to translate for both audience and orchestra Bartók’s solitary impressions as he faced the blank page of the score.
As sometimes happens on special occasions, the Orquestra Simfònica de Balears led us to a kind of sonic Olympus, displaying a readiness to shine that only emerges under particular circumstances – those that allow us to glimpse the orchestra’s own distinct and individual character. To see the musicians, both permanent members and additional players, applauding enthusiastically at the end of the evening was an unmistakable sign.”
Fernando Merino, OK Baleares