When Hannu Lintu speaks about Singapore, one of the things he mentions is the rain.
Having grown up by the sea in Finland, where the sounds of birds, water and winter were familiar to him, he found Singapore’s rain strikingly different. What stayed with him most was the experience of an intense storm passing quickly, followed by air that felt clean and carried a rich mixture of smells.
It is a small observation, but one that reveals how Hannu approaches a new environment: by listening closely and looking beyond first impressions.
Singapore is a city that, when you come here for the first time and look around, you don’t understand the historical layers very easily. You need to explore and look around very carefully, and then you’ll see that the city is not one-sided at all.
In July 2026, Hannu began his tenure as the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s Quantedge Music Director, becoming the fourth Music Director in the orchestra’s history. His appointment marks a new artistic chapter for the SSO, while continuing a relationship that began almost a decade ago.
A Relationship Built Over Time
Hannu first conducted the SSO in 2017 and he remembers musicians who were disciplined, skilled and professional; an enthusiastic audience; as well as the beauty and acoustics of the Esplanade Concert Hall.
Discussions about working together in a longer-term capacity were interrupted by the pandemic. By the time conversations resumed, Hannu was completing his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet while considering the next stage of his career.
Having worked extensively across Europe and America, he was drawn to the unique geographical and cultural context Singapore offered.
I was working so much in Europe, but something big was happening in Singapore, and I wanted to be part of it.
What attracted him was not only the SSO’s musicianship, but also the wider cultural momentum he sensed in the city. Singapore’s audiences bring different traditions, experiences and relationships with classical music. Programming for such a varied community may be complex, but that complexity is precisely what appeals to him.
That’s what I love about Singapore. It’s a real melting pot in so many different ways.
That combination of artistic potential, timing and cultural curiosity ultimately led him to accept the role here. Following his appointment as Music Director-designate, Hannu returned to work with the SSO during the 2025/26 season, conducting works including Haydn’s Nelson Mass and Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. These performances helped Hannu and the musicians become even more familiar with one another before his tenure began.
Building Trust Through Music
For Hannu, trust between a conductor and an orchestra begins with the repertoire they perform together.
Although he is widely known for his interpretations of 20th-century and contemporary music, the early part of his SSO programming will focus largely on the orchestral canon.
The best way to build a relationship with an orchestra is with the standard repertoire – things which orchestras know well, and which conductors hopefully know well – so you can start communicating and making music immediately.
His first season sees him conducting the SSO in music by Mahler, Richard Strauss, Schubert, Brahms and Schumann. These works provide common ground through which Hannu can learn more about the orchestra, while the musicians become familiar with how he listens, rehearses and shapes a performance.
For his inaugural concert, Hannu paired Mason Bates’s Nomad Concerto, featuring violinist Gil Shaham, with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. He saw a connection between the concerto’s idea of the nomad and the challenges faced by travelling musicians, who must learn to communicate with different orchestras and cultures wherever they work. Mahler’s Fifth also carried symbolic significance for Hannu: he saw the symphony as “a new start,” with its opening trumpet fanfare signalling that “something new is happening”.
Hannu also considers how the works within each programme relate to one another:
I hope that when each programme is finished, people have a feeling that they have gone through a journey which connects those pieces on many different levels.
As the SSO’s programming expands beyond familiar repertoire into newer and more challenging works, Hannu hopes audiences will trust that every programme has been chosen with them in mind and that the orchestra believes deeply in the music it presents.
“We want the audience to trust us,” Hannu says. “That anything we offer them, we believe in it.”
Shaping a Recognisable SSO Sound
If there is one ambition that recurs when Hannu speaks about his new role, it is the sound of the orchestra.
Orchestras around the world now perform at extraordinarily high technical levels. At the same time, he believes globalisation and the influence of recording culture have caused many ensembles to sound increasingly similar. “Many play wonderfully, technically perfect, but they sound like each other,” he observes.
Hannu hopes to build on the SSO’s existing sound culture and strengths, while shaping an identity that listeners can recognise immediately.
I want people to hear a recording and say, ‘Oh, this is the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.’
This identity will take shape through the repertoire the orchestra performs and the work that happens in rehearsal. Hannu already has an idea of the sound he hopes to create, although he does not believe it can be adequately described in words; audiences will have to come and hear it for themselves.
Alongside established repertoire, he hopes to deepen the SSO’s engagement with contemporary music and develop meaningful relationships with Singaporean composers. “We are the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, so we need to do Singaporean music,” he says.
Hannu sees the potential to spotlight original voices among Singaporean composers, many of whom draw strongly on local influences. He also believes their music presents something distinctive for the SSO to bring abroad through tours and recordings – in the orchestra’s upcoming China tour, it will perform Wang Chenwei’s The Sisters’ Islands.
For Hannu personally, he draws inspiration from many different musical and artistic traditions. Sibelius holds a particularly significant place in his heart: the Finnish composer’s music is closely connected to his cultural identity and will form another thread within his work with the SSO.
Bach made a strong impression on him from an early age, while his discovery of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde as a teenager opened another musical world. Hearing its Prelude for the first time was an immediate and overwhelming experience.
“I couldn’t describe it,” he recalls. “I was totally carried away.”
His interests extend well beyond music. Hannu reads widely, attends exhibitions and goes to the theatre, looking for connections between composers, painters, writers and the artistic worlds they inhabited. Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky are among the writers to whom he repeatedly returns.
For Hannu, this breadth of curiosity is essential to an artist’s development.
“If you’re an artist, you need to be a whole artist. You can’t have this kind of tunnel vision.”
He hopes audiences will approach music with the same openness, remaining curious about different art forms and allowing each encounter with the orchestra to become part of a broader artistic life.
Looking Ahead
The 2026/27 season marks a new phase in Hannu’s work with the SSO. In October 2026, he will lead the orchestra on a seven-city tour, marking the SSO’s first return to China since 2011.
As the SSO approaches its 50th anniversary in 2029, the years ahead offer scope to build on the orchestra’s established strengths while allowing its sound and artistic identity to continue evolving. For Hannu, that process begins with listening carefully to the musicians and audiences, alongside a deeper understanding of Singapore’s cultural life. Each programme offers another opportunity for him and the orchestra to deepen their understanding of one another through the music they make together.
This Bravissimo article draws on the Hannu Lintu × SSO video series, together with interviews and reports published by a+, Bachtrack, Bakchormeeboy and Robb Report Singapore.