ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that the development of the 'concert institution' and the changes in concert repertoires in Helsinki from the 1840s to the 1890s. The main purpose is to present a very local perspective on the development that William Weber calls 'the great transformation of musical taste' in Western concert life. According to him, before the mid-century, the classic canon of Western orchestral music was formed and a similar canonizing also occurred in solo recitals organized by travelling instrumentalists. Concert life in Helsinki from the 1840s to 1890s followed only partly the metropolitan development in continental Europe. The chapter explains that some features in Helsinki concert life by the small audience numbers and restricted musical availability. In the Helsinki concerts during the nineteenth century the role of foreign musicians was prominent if not decisive, and this very fact made local music life cosmopolitan and by no means national in the narrow sense of the word.
