The Finnish maestra became chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic this season, will make her Met Opera debut conducting Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de loin in December, and led major debuts with U.S. orchestras. She becomes principal guest conductor of the LAPhil next season.

Photo: © 2014 Simon Fowler.

At the Lucerne Festival in late August 2004, a young conductor, not widely known at the time, made a packed concert hall sit up by creating thrilling, vital music with the Ensemble InterContemporain in a program of works by the English monumental modernist Harrison Birtwistle. Memory stirred. Yes, this was the very individual who had, two years before, and also at Lucerne, done the same thing conducting Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. That a musician could be equally adept—and equally remarkable—in new music and in one of the great but so often under-rehearsed and undervalued standards was astonishing. This was the kind of artistry that had made people pay attention to David Robertson a decade or so earlier. Now there was a new, more exotic name to learn: Susanna Mälkki.

Belonging to the 50 percent of world-ranking conductors these days who are Finnish, Mälkki studied, like the rest of that cohort, with Jorma Panula. He was, she says, “a very important person in my becoming a conductor,” though the decision had been made before she joined his class at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. There she also trained as a cellist, and it was with her cello on the plane or train seat beside her that she began her professional career, while continuing her conducting studies.

She was, most importantly, principal cellist of the symphony orchestra in Gothenburg, Sweden, between 1995 and 1998, when she was in her late twenties. Neeme Järvi was the music director then, but Gothenburg also attracted outstanding guest conductors, and Mälkki observed them all. “It was interesting to see and hear how the orchestra changed, and how the all-important interaction worked, the collaboration between conductor and players.”

After Gothenburg, she began gaining wider experience on the podium, and got her start as a music director with the orchestra in Stavanger, Norway, in 2002. The Birtwistle concert in Lucerne, two years later, was her first with the Ensemble InterContemporain, and led to a position as its music director, between 2006 and 2013.

It was a role for which she was suited. “I had already found as a cellist,” she recalls, “that there was a totally different energy when I was playing new music. I felt more directly in contact with the music and also more liberated, not so bound by what I had been told by my teachers—though Panula, I should add, was so important partly because he encouraged you to find your own way. Also, I think as a musician you may respond more immediately to music composed by someone of your own time, living in the same world as you do.”

However, the hallmark of a Mälkki performance is the fresh expressiveness she brings to music whether new or old, as those 2004 Lucerne concerts demonstrated. “What really interests me in music,” she says, “is the subtext, the reason why the notes are as they are. In the case of new music, there is a reason why composers do all these crazy things; they mean something, express something.” Does she, then, feel it useful to explore period techniques in order to retrieve what music may have meant and expressed in the past? “It’s very important to be informed about these things, but what’s essential is not to force the music in any particular direction, to let the music have its own flow.”

Since the beginning of this season she has been chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic, her first such position with a major orchestra. There she has the chance to build programs that reflect her taste and experience, most often including at least one piece from the last 50 years or so in each concert. Her season opener had newish works by two leading Finnish composers of today, Kaija Saariaho and Magnus Lindberg, in a triple-decker sandwich with Ligeti, Sibelius, and Ravel.

Certainly her most daring combination this season, however, is that of Messiaen’s monumental Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum with the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto. “Well,” she insists, “I love both these works, and I think you could justify putting them together as opposites: the spirit and then the senses. Or yes, you could turn it around and see them as the grieving earth and then heaven. What matters is that you treat both scores with the utmost seriousness. The Rachmaninoff, which can suffer so much from tasteless performances, is highly refined, very classy music.”

Other concerts in Helsinki this season have her conducting two symphonies by Mahler, a composer for whom she has been waiting: “I wanted to develop my tools.” Something else she has been developing her tools for is more operatic repertoire. Anything in particular? “Tristan.”

She will make her Met debut (December 1) in Saariaho’s opera L’Amour de loin, and is becoming increasingly a presence on this side of the Atlantic. Her New York Philharmonic debut in May 2015, in a typical program of Brahms plus Jonathan Harvey (his meditative Tranquil Abiding), had her being mooted as a possible successor to Alan Gilbert, though perhaps a top post in this country is something for which, again, she wants to wait a little longer. And no doubt Helsinki will enable her to develop more tools for the challenge.

“I love working in the U.S. because the orchestras are so fantastic, and I feel I can come very close to my musical goals,” she says. From next season, she will be principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with which she has worked occasionally since 2010. She has also established relationships in Chicago and San Francisco.

Someday it will happen. Some organization looking for a superb musician—one who knows the orchestra inside out, has great rapport with players, and, besides being able to make inspiring choices from the contemporary repertoire, can revivify the classics with her energy and immediacy—will know where to look. Oh, and she’s a woman.

Paul Griffiths was born in Wales in 1947 and worked for 30 years as a music critic in London and New York. He is known particularly as a writer on new and recent music, his Modern Music and After, now in its third edition, being the standard work on music since 1945.

http://www.musicalamerica.com/pages/?pagename=2017_Conductor_Malkki 

Cleaning your laptop may help increase its lifetime and maintain your health as keyboards and touch pad’s are own development environments for germs and bacteria. Find out what steps you should follow to clean the laptop and how you can get your own screen cleaning kit using simple household, ingredients.  If you take care in the selection of materials, dirt and cleaning solutions, you will solve the problem in a few minutes and only by using the products that you find in the house.

CLEANING THE KEYBOARD.

Since the keyboard is the dirtiest part of a laptop, which can harbor more harmful bacteria to your health than most toilet seats, the first thing you should do is to start cleaning this component.

First use a compressed air spray, spraying the keyboard at a distance of more centimeters away on an angle of about 54 degrees. Then look closely at the space between keys and using tweezers gather any scrap of lint, hair, etc.

If you don’t have such a spray, tip the laptop in one hand and using a  paint brush remove the debris from the keyboard. The same solution works for usb ports, and vents.

CLEANING THE SCREEN.
The ideal solution is simple distilled water. LCD panel manufacturers do not recommend to clean them with alcohol, ammonia or other strong solvents. So apply a little distilled water on a soft microfiber cloth, not paper towels, dish towels or rough rags. Napkins and other paper can contain wood fibers, scratching the surface.
If you need a more thorough cleaning, prepare a mild cleaning solution by mixing in a spray bottle, distilled water with equal amounts of white vinegar. Do not spray directly on the screen, just apply small amounts pf the mixture on a very soft cloth, preferably cotton (you can even use an old shirt) or microfiber for a lint-free screen.

Dampen the cloth and wipe the screen with circular movements, but do not press to hard because your risk to permanently destroy LCD’s matrix.

 http://perfecthousewife.net/how-to-clean-a-laptop-at-home

As flight 1549 climbed away from New York's La Guardia Airport, Jeff Kolodjay leaned back in his seat and smiled at the thought of the golfing trip ahead of him in sunny North Carolina.

It was the coldest day of the winter in New York with temperatures way below zero.

The ten-year-old Airbus 320 ascended smoothly to 2,800ft, then 3,200.

It had been snowing on Thursday morning and Mr Kolodjay took in the picture-postcard view below him of Washington Heights and the Hudson River.

Going down: A witness's photo shows the stricken Airbus over the Hudson River.

Four rows behind him sat 37-year-old Vallie Collins, a mother of three. At 3.26pm, less than a minute after take-off, both sat forward with a jolt. There was a boom which seemed to rock the plane.

Mr Kolodjay, 31, turned to the window to see flames leaping from the engine.

Mrs Collins could smell smoke and reached for her mobile telephone to punch out a message to her family. It read: 'My plane is crashing.'

She said: 'I thought, "OK, I'm not going to see my husband and children again." And I just want them to know at this point, they were the number one thought in my mind.' There was no time for the final three words she wanted to include: 'I love you.'

In the cockpit Captain Chesley B Sullenberger III had radioed New York air traffic control to say his plane had suffered a 'double bird strike' taking out both engines.

He had spotted a runway across the Hudson River in northern New Jersey. What was it? It was Teterboro Airport, a strip popular with corporate jets. Sullenberger asked for permission to make an emergency landing.

Air traffic controllers say an 'eerie calm' descended on them as they examined their options. Return to LaGuardia? Too far. Land at Teterboro? The plane wouldn't make that either.

Before they could give any advice radio contact was lost. Radar showed the jet making a series of tight turns to the left to head down the river, flying low over the George Washington Bridge.

On board passengers and the three flight attendants were saying their prayers.

Mr Kolodjay said a Hail Mary. 'We thought that was it,' he said. 'The end.'

Over the intercom, the captain sounded amazingly calm. 'Brace for impact,' he announced. 'We are going down.'

As the Airbus hit the Hudson, passengers were thrown forward but somehow Sullenburger held it steady despite the enormous splash witnessed by crews of commuter ferries on the great river.

As icy water began penetrating the cabin, it was 'controlled chaos', said Dave Sanderson, 47, a father of four, who had been sitting halfway down the plane. 'People started running up the aisle. People were getting shoved out of the way. We had survived the crash, but we were going to drown.'

For Mrs Collins, the most terrifying moment came when she was caught in the back galley of the plane  -  water seeping in from exits which would open only a crack, and dozens of passengers bearing down on her, frantic to get out.

'I was trying as hard as I could to push both of those doors,' she said. She was up to her waist in water, seat cushions floating between the passengers. 'I put my hands up and said, "You can't get out this way. Go to the wings! Keep moving, people! We're going to make it. Stay calm".'

A flight attendant added to the atmosphere of hysteria, however, by warning: 'We probably only have two minutes.'

Martin and Tess Sosa were travelling with their children, four-year-old Sophia and Damian, at nine months the youngest passenger on the plane.

'Coming down was like a rollercoaster ride, just like you see in the movies,' said Mr Sosa.

'There was impact and then I could hear my son crying  -  that was a good sign to me. The next thing you know the water is coming into the cabin. It was horrendous. There were people jumping over one another. Some were even going for their luggage.'

His wife said: 'I stayed out of harm's way in the passenger seat while everyone stormed through the aisles. Only one gentleman stopped and said, "Can I help you guys get to the exit?".'

Passengers clambered up on top of the seats. 'Women and children first!' some male passengers shouted as others made their way out the doors at the front and middle of the plane, and on to the wings.

One woman had a three-year-old child, and other passengers on a raft told her to toss the girl to them. She did and then got on the raft herself.

Mr Sanderson said one woman initially refused to get off the plane until she had her luggage, but they eventually persuaded her to flee.

The last out was Captain Sullenberger after walking twice the length of the cabin to ensure no one was inside.

Outside, the air temperature was -6C and those huddled on the wing or in the water were going limp and could not have survived more than a few minutes. The captain and his crew gave their jackets to freezing passengers.

Passenger Barry Leonard was in serious danger of hypothermia after initially leaping into the water before making it to a raft.

'I was obviously very cold and one of the crew turned to me and said, "Please take off your wet shirt and I'll give you my dry one",' he recalled.

'And he gave me his shirt. He literally gave me the shirt off his back to keep me warmer. I still have it. And I'm never going to give it up.'

Incredibly, by the time the passengers had reached the wings, rescuers were virtually alongside the ferries which ply the waters between New York and New Jersey.

The last time an airliner crash landed on water is believed to have been in 1996, when three Ethiopians seeking political asylum hijacked a plane from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. It ran out of fuel over the Indian Ocean and 125 of the 175 passengers and crew on board were killed.

Chilling sight: The plane began to sink into the icy Hudson River last night but thankfully all passengers and crew were safe… (By David Williams).

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1120264/Anatomy-miracle-How-Captain-Chesley-Sullenbergers-skill-saved-155-lives.html#ixzz44gLRKt4C