There can’t be many conductors who have driven aid trucks across the Ukrainian border, but then Dalia Stasevska isn’t your average maestra. Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chief Conductor in Lahti, the boundary-pushing Finnish musician is a breath of fresh air.

Stasevska was born in Kyiv in 1984, then a part of the Soviet Union, but as her Ukrainian father and Finnish mother were studying art at Tallinn University, she spent the first five years of her life in Estonia. 

“I have fond memories from my childhood in Tallinn,” she says. “Although we were extremely poor, the warmth of the people and the way everybody looked after each other was something I really remember. It was so different when we came to Finland where the shops were full, and my parents started to earn money.”

Dalia Stasevska

Dalia Stasevska. Photo © Veikko Kähkönen

There’s something effortlessly unruffled about Stasevska that belies life as an in-demand conductor with a dozen projects and a baby on the go. Chatting over Zoom, she’s agreeably chilled, but every now and then a topic draws her forward in her chair, and the...