The Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen was recently given the honour of carrying the torch at the Olympic Games in central London.  The Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of London’s Philharmonic Orchestra and Conductor Laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, was torchbearer number 40 in the 2012 Torch Relay.

Salonen was given the flame at 9.40am and ran some 300 metres through the City of London, starting on St Martin’s Le-Grand, then continuing along Cheapside  finishing on Gresham Street, before handing the flame over to the next torchbearer. Salonen was one of 8000 Olympic torch bearers and the Olympic flame has travelled nearly 13,000 kilometres around the world in the last few months.

‘It says something about the basic joy of the Olympic spirit,’ said Salonen. ‘The nice and rather overwhelming thing was to see all those people in the street and the general happiness, and I thought that was something you don’t see that often these days. For all of us in our group, that was the most powerful experience of this thing’.