Ernest Pingoud (1887 - 1942)

Having become independent at the end of 1917, Finland had its first modernist musical revelation less than a year later, when Ernest Pingoud (1887–1942) conducted a concert of his own orchestral works. His late-Romantic symphonic poems related to Scriabin’s Symbolist world shook the Finnish music circles. Pingoud was born in St Petersburg and was educated there under Anton Rubinstein, Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov, before completing his studies with Max Reger in Leipzig. A musician of international culture, in a country committed to building a strong national identity, Pingoud was not successful with his cosmopolitanism.