Paavo Berglund (1929-2012)

The celebrated Finnish orchestral conductor Paavo Berglund died at his home in Helsinki on January 25th, at the age of 82.
      As a child, Berglund studied the violin, and expressed disdain for the "idiots" on the rostrum waving their arms madly in front of the orchestra.
      He joined the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra as a violinist in 1949, at the age of 20, and so the story goes, on one occasion too many he apparently let out an audible gasp at a lesser conductor's flubs.
      The leader of the orchestra challenged him to do better - and he did.
     
Berglund founded his own chamber orchestra in that same year, and his breakthrough came with the ensemble's début concert in 1952, with encouragement soon coming from no less a personage than Jean Sibelius.
      In 1956, he was appointed Associate Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and during his ten years (1962-1971) at the helm as its Chief Conductor, Berglund greatly developed the RSO.
      Though there was an acrimonious parting of the ways, cordial relations between Berglund and the radio orchestra were quickly restored and he remained a regular guest conductor into the new century.
      In 1975, Berglund took up the post of Music Director with the Helsinki Philharmonic, and once again his uncompromising, even "dictatorial" approach saw a dramatic improvement in the quality of the ensemble's playing.
     
By this stage, Berglund was an international name, and his services were sought as a visiting conductor on both sides of the Atlantic.
      He conducted regularly with the New York Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic, particularly in the Sibelius repertoire.
      Between 1972 and 1979, he was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in the UK, from 1987-91 he served in the same capacity with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and from 1993-98 he was Chief Conductor of the Royal Danish Orchestra.
     
Berglund's recording career was long and extensive. He made the world première recording of Sibelius's Kullervo symphony for soloists, chorus and orchestra for EMI while with the Bournemouth Symphony, and recorded all of Sibelius's symphonic works in Bournemouth, and later with the Helsinki Philharmonic and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
      He also recorded the symphonies of Johannes Brahms and Carl Nielsen, and much of the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, in addition to bringing to wider attention the compositions of Finnish composers such as Aulis Sallinen and Joonas Kokkonen.
      Berglund conducted his last concerts in London and Paris in the spring of 2007, before retiring from the rostrum owing to ill-health.
     
Beneath the gruff perfectionist exterior, Berglund was a hugely helpful maestro with a fine sense of humour, and this comes out in tributes received on his passing from the likes of the Berlin Philharmonic's Sir Simon Rattle, who actually started out as Berglund's assistant in Bournemouth in 1974, the Philharmonia Orchestra's Esa-Pekka Salonen, or Berglund's old friend and contemporary Kurt Masur, formerly music director of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the New York Philharmonic, and the London Philharmonic.
      In many an orchestra around the world, a moment's silence was held during rehearsals on Thursday - Paavo Berglund was a hugely respected figure.


Links:
  Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
  YouTube: Paavo Berglund conducts the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Sibelius´s The Bard
  Paavo Berglund (Wikipedia)