"My father, Sulo Pehkonen, was born in Karelia, near the Russian border. During the 1917 Finnish Winter War with the Russian Bolsheviks he was separated from his parents and taken to England by a British soldier.

"Who suffered most because of Lenin & Stalin? Not just the Finns and other nation states of Eastern Europe, but the whole of Russia. This must not be forgotten and is why I composed Russian Requiem."