Paavo Berglund - Telegraph Back in Finland, Berglund and a number of colleagues formed the Helsinki Chamber Orchestra. However, he was soon working with the symphony orchestra again, although this time on the podium. He was first invited to Bournemouth in 1965, to conduct the Sibelius centenary concerts, and quickly became established as a popular figure on the south coast. He served as principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from 1972 for seven years, enthusing audiences with a love of music from northerly latitudes; he staged the British premiere of Sibelius's Kullervo, a largely forgotten early tone poem. His appearance at the Proms in 1975 exploring rarities by Sibelius "could scarcely have been livelier," noted one critic. Berglund was principal guest conductor of the Scottish National Orchestra in the 1980s and also made regular visits to Britain with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, of which he had been chief conductor from 1962 to 1972. Apart from Bournemouth and Glasgow, however, Berglund's career outside the Nordic countries was largely peripatetic. He frequently guest conducted with orchestras in Liverpool, Manchester and London, and worked with bands as diverse as the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Russian National Orchestra (with which he performed with Mstislav Rostropovich for the 80th birthday celebrations of Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the Kremlin in 1988). He was popular in Denmark, where he recorded the Nielsen symphonies with the Royal Danish National Orchestra. Away from the Scandinavian composers, his accounts of Shostakovich could be blistering affairs and his Tchaikovsky intense, alert and revelatory. Strong, poker-faced and holding the baton in his left hand while using his right to colour the music, Berglund was popular among orchestral musicians, taking care never to overplay his hand, musically or otherwise. Asked once about his icy expression and stone-faced demeanour, he hissed back: "Why are you British journalists obsessed with feelings?" He became so taciturn in an interview on Radio 3 that the broadcast descended into a series of monosyllabic answers. Nevertheless, he was totally thorough in his musical preparation. On one occasion, when the Scottish Chamber Orchestra invited him to conduct Sibelius's Rakastava, he brought with him the composer's original parts. Berglund was appointed honorary OBE in 1977 and was also honoured by the Swedish and Finnish governments. His recorded legacy includes three complete cycles of Sibelius's seven symphonies, while his account of Kullervo on disc was nominated for a Grammy. One of his last appearances in London was with the London Philharmonic in 2006. Although Berglund was by then very frail, he offered a 21st-century audience what one critic described as a "powerful and authentic connection to the world of Sibelius." Paavo Berglund married, in 1958, Kirsti Kivekäs, who survives him with a son and two daughters. Paavo Berglund, born April 14 1929, died January 25 2012