The Finnish School: Why Finland Produces the World’s Leading Conductors

Wherever you live, whatever you watch on medici.tv, it’s likely you’ve seen a performance conducted by someone from the relatively small European nation of Finland.  

Over the last few decades, Finns have become a major force in world conducting. Musicians from Finland have held chief conductor positions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Ottawa, Toronto, Tokyo, Seoul, Riga, Paris, Lisbon, Prague, Saarbrücken, Cologne, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Reykjavik, Glasgow, London, Manchester, Birmingham and Wellington while orchestras in Singapore and Amsterdam are about two welcome new chiefs from the country. Many more cities and opera houses are visited by freelance Finnish conductors.  

The numbers are extraordinary. The population of Finland is just a little over five and a half million – less than the population of Barcelona alone. If conducting were an Olympic sport, Finland would comfortably top the medals table, beating the USA, the UK, Germany and China. 

Why the proliferation of Finnish conductors working at the highest level? It’s a question I tried to address in my book The Northern Silence – partly because so many people had been asking me, and for so long. 

In fact, I’d already asked myself the question many times – specifically, ever since I saw the conductor John Storgårds conduct a life-changing performance of Sibelius’s Symphony No 4 with the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra in London one evening in December 2007. That’s when I started to develop something of an obsession with what happens musically and culturally in Finland, and vowed to travel there to investigate as frequently as I could.  

A Numbers Game

Music is important to Finns, and Sibelius is partly to thank for that. The composer became a figurehead during the fight for independence from Russians, and when Finland tore itself apart in a bloody, divisive civil war in 1918, he was probably the only public figure who remained an icon for both sides. 

In the years after the Second World War, Finland and the other Nordic countries reinvented themselves as high-tax, high welfare societies in which healthcare and education would be provided for free. Music, with the wider arts, libraries and so on, was seen as part of this – its provision not exactly free, but cheap; a sort of extension of the welfare state. 

In Finland, Sibelius loomed large in that process. He was the man who had helped imagine an independent Finland, and he was also the artist who had proved, contrary to the beliefs of the Germans who had been cultural surrogates for the Nordic lands, that there was still life in ‘the symphony’. 

It’s no accident that a remarkable network of symphony orchestras sprang up in Finland on the principle that everyone should be able to hear symphonic music played live. 

By my calculations, Finland now has around fifteen professional, symphony orchestras, twelve of them located outside Helsinki. Per capita, that is more than any other country on earth (with the exception of city-states or island nations that have tiny populations and one orchestra). 

What does that have to do with the proliferation of conductors? Well, orchestras need conductors. On a deeper level, it normalizes classical and orchestral music. Even more relevant, in this case, is that it gives young people in Finland far more opportunities to conduct professional orchestras. 

Young conductors face a dilemma: the only way to get experience is to get time in front of a professional orchestra; and the only way to get time in front of a professional orchestra is to prove your experience. Finland, with its network of symphony orchestras all over the country, goes some way to solving that problem. 

Plenty of the many Finnish conductors I have spoken to have talked of the benefit of formative time in front of these orchestras and their accessibility. ‘It makes the whole thing more accessible for everyone,’ the Finnish Chief Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, Anna-Maria Helsing, told me a few years ago. 

Even now at the Sibelius Academy, where the conducting professor is Sakari Oramo – Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra – students get to work with a real orchestra every week. It is the only conservatory in western Europe where the members of the conducting class get that opportunity. 

This proliferation of orchestras also feeds the conducting profession in other ways. Conductors used to be pianists – they would come from an opera house, having served an apprenticeship as a repetiteur. 

These days, more and more conductors come from within orchestras. A striking number of the Finnish conductors working at an international level started off as professional musicians inside orchestras – among them the big names like Sakari Oramo, Osmo Vänskä, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and John Storgårds. They know how orchestras work from the inside, and the musicians they conduct can tell. 

The Panula Factor

In any discussion of the proliferation of Finnish conductors, it’s usually not long before the name Jorma Panula comes up. Panula was Oramo’s predecessor as conducting professor at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and is a conductor in his own right. 

On the annual Day of Finnish Music in 2025 – a day which also doubles as Sibelius’s birthday (8 December) – the 95-year-old Panula conducted the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in this fascinating concert (below) of music by Sibelius, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Sebastian Fagerlund and Uuno Klami. 

Panula is less famous for his own performances, and more for the conductors he has trained – more or less every Finnish conductor working professionally today, either privately or at the Sibelius Academy.

When I wrote about the phenomenal success of Finnish conductors in this article for The Telegraph newspaper, Anna-Maria Helsing summarized Panula’s strengths when teaching emerging conductors: ‘He sees into the core of what you’re doing,’ she told me; ‘With one word he can make you realize what you need to fix.’ 

Panula has never told any of his pupils ‘how’ to conduct. Many of them have demonstrably different conducting styles – just compare Hannu Lintu with Susanna Mälkki. Rather, he encourages his students to be clear and concise within their own natural physical style. It seems to work. 

Panula also encourages a lack of verbosity in his pupils. Finns, the stereotype goes, don’t talk much. But it’s a stereotype that often rings true for anyone who has spent significant time in Finland. Finns don’t waste time on small talk; if they say something, it’s probably for an important reason – and worth listening to.

Orchestras appreciate this. Talk to orchestral players in Great Britain in particular – where all three of the BBC’s orchestras in England are currently led by Chief Conductors from Finland – and they’ll tell you that little irritates them more than being lectured by conductors or regaled with abstract metaphors by them. As Helsing said to me: ‘we are educated [in Finland] that if you can’t show something with your hands, then you should go home.’

But we can’t credit all this with Panula – for the simple reason that he taught conductors from all over the world, and anyone can apply to the Sibelius Academy’s conducting course. So what is it that is particular about Finns?

Less Temperament, More Traits

Every Finnish conductor has a different technique. That’s mostly because every Finnish conductor has a different persona, and conducting is nothing if not an extension of the personality. It’s hard to imagine more contrasting personalities than Dalia Stasevska and Santtu-Matis Rouvali – to name but two from the same generation. 

And yet, the two are somehow unmistakably Finnish – and not just because of the language they use and their distinctive way of speaking English. 

There are common traits among Finns. Directness is one – the tendency not to talk ‘around’ difficult subjects or get caught up in social hierarchies, which generally don’t exist in Finland. A certain, ironic humour is another. Finns can laugh at themselves, and at plenty of things that other nationalities might find awkward.

Like a lot of Nordic societies, Finland’s is non-hierarchical; there is no aristocracy to speak of and relatively few millionaires. Part of the high-tax, high-welfare model instils a genuine feeling that ‘we’re all in this together.’ 

Somehow, this fits with the new idea of how orchestras like to work – more democratic, less hierarchical, with the conductor as someone who sorts out and focuses opinions, rather than proclaiming the one true way from on high. 

Finns are also pragmatic – they have had to be, existing sandwiched between two former colonial rulers (Sweden to the west, Russian to the east) and negotiating one of the harshest winters in Europe. 

And yet, despite their Lutheran reserve, Finns are an emotional people who cleave to literature, art and music to help make sense of their lives. Scratch below the surface, and plenty of even very ordinary Finns have deep, considered existential ideas. They are a passionate people – again, a trait formed by the nation’s century of hardship, which has resulted in a strong sense of national mission and even leadership. 

Role Models 

Success begets success. The reason there’s a particularly high number of outstanding footballers from Liverpool is that Liverpool has a reputation for producing outstanding footballers. 

It’s the same with Finnish conductors. ‘Growing up as a young violin student, seeing our own Finnish conductors on television all the time out in the world conducting concerts, that had an impact,’ Anna-Maria Helsing told me. ‘That sort of makes it more possible for the rest of us.’

Good Finnish musicians see conducting as a reasonable progression of their career path, and there are plenty of mentors to go around. 

And Finland is still a small country, its capital a small city. If you ever find yourself near the National Museum in Helsinki, nip into the nearby St Urho’s Pub – known locally as ‘Urkki’. You may see a huddle of Finnish conductors in the corner, exchanging tips, comparing notes on the New York Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra. This is where Finnish conductors are known to ‘hang out.’

‘We do meet,’ says Anna-Maria Helsing. ‘We talk about whatever is the issue that week: how do you get the strings to sound well in this passage or do you have any ideas about how to balance this or that.’ Another Finnish conductor has told me about a WhatsApp group.

Helsing told me that if she wanted advice, she would always turn to Hannu Lintu. When I spoke to Lintu in 2021 about the close community of Finnish conductors, he spoke about Urkki but also about texting one another. ‘We discuss orchestras,’ he said; ‘a principal trumpet in this orchestra or that orchestra, or what you can do with the first violin section in another orchestra – these kinds of practical things which are valuable if you are going somewhere for the first time and you have a colleague who has already been there. They can tell you: look, don’t try to fix this or that because you’ll be banging your head against a wall. I have noticed that our international colleagues don’t have this.’

And Still They Come 

Whatever lies behind the profusion of conducting talent from Finland, it appears to be working. Every time you hear of the latest, even younger conducting talent from the country, you then hear about another one coming up behind them. On the concert for Finnish Music Day linked to above, there’s a chance to see Jorma Panula’s latest protégé in action: the conductor Maxim Fagerlund. 

It’s been a privilege – and extraordinarily exciting – to see this stream of emerging talent. I was lucky enough to witness some of the well-known Finnish conductors in action early on in their careers and long before they were famous, notably Klaus Mäkelä and Santtu-Matias Rouvali.

A year ago I had my first taste of Tarmo Peltokoski, and was blown away by his intensity and passion. I’m intrigued to see Emilia Hoving’s next move. You somehow know, that being from Finland, these conductors will be as good as chocolate from Belgium. It’s been fascinating to watch the inimitable Pekka Kuusisto’s career expand from virtuoso violin soloist to incorporate a conducting side-hustle. 

Apparently, says Anna-Maria Helsing, the other Finnish conductors are watching too. ‘If it goes well for one Finnish conductor out in the world, then we are all very proud and happy.’