“Finnish composer and conducting coach Jorma Panula has caused a storm in his home country by criticising women conductors in a television interview,” writes Sam Gillies in Thursday’s (4/3) Limelight Magazine (Australia). “In an interview published by the Finnish news broadcaster MTV, Panula was bluntly asked if it is a good thing that women conductors enter the profession. Panula replied with a firm ‘I do not!’ Jorma Panula, 83, is a highly regarded conductor and educator, and throughout the 60’s and 70’s served as the artistic director and chief conductor of the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Aarhus Symphony.… He has been credited as the teacher of a generation of Finland’s most successful conductors…. Panula went on to suggest that female conductors may be effective when conducting more feminine music.… Fellow Finns were quick to hit back, with Esa-Pekka Salonen, the [former] Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and one of the first generation of conductors trained in Panula’s conducting class tweeting out, ‘Conducting is a matter of skill, not biology. There is no reason why women cannot do it equally well or better.’ ”
Posted April 3, 2014
