With our Season 2026 underway and musicians once again bustling through the building, we’ve been catching up on what they got up to over the summer break.
TSO horn player Julian Leslie put his love of cold-water swimming to the test with a winter weekend in Lapland, the northernmost part of Finland.
Julian spent 10 weeks in Finland, working as principal horn with the Turku Philharmonic – one of the oldest orchestras in the world.
Here he shares some of his highlights from the trip.
Hi Julian, please tell us how this 10 week secondment to Turku, Finland came about.
My friend Hannes Kaukoranta and I hatched the idea of doing a job swap a couple of years ago, and somehow it came to fruition this year.
I previously lived in Finland for nine years – first on exchange and then completing a master’s degree at the Sibelius Academy – and then working throughout the country in many of its roughly 25 professional orchestras (for a population of just 5.6 million!).
Tell us more about the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra – one of the world’s oldest!
The orchestra plays at a very high level and is slightly larger than TSO, with a full wind section, five horns, and around ten additional string players.
The concert hall in Turku, built in 1953 as Finland’s first purpose-built concert hall, is quite a cavernous echo chamber with endless acoustical quirks and challenges.
However, the good news is that in mid-2026 the orchestra will move into a new purpose-built concert hall.
It looks set to be one of the best halls in Finland and will allow this already excellent orchestra to flourish.
The situation in Ukraine means that funding is increasingly channelled into military spending and the arts are often the first on the chopping block.
Hopefully, with the significant investment in the new hall and orchestra, the Turku Philharmonic will remain safe for the foreseeable future.
What were some of the program highlights while you were there?
Highlights of the Turku season included Pictures at an Exhibition, and a program including Brahms Symphony 3, Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder with Cornelia Beskow, and Sibelius Symphony 7.
We also performed a marathon three-hour concert celebrating 80 years of the Finnish Composers’ Society, featuring one composition from each decade.
Markus Stenz - well known to many from his time in Australia - was guest conductor for one week, during which we performed the Khachaturian Violin Concerto with the outstanding Norwegian soloist Eldbjørg Hemsing, as well as Schumann’s Second Symphony.
We hear you also worked with some other orchestras while in Finland?
In addition to my work in Turku, I was pleased to return to my former orchestra, Pori Sinfonietta, for a concert featuring Brahms and Ravel.
I also played Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Helsinki, and a few weeks later was invited back to play principal horn for their Finnish Independence Day concert.
What did you get up to outside of work?
I made sure to enjoy classic Finnish autumn and winter activities. One particularly popular pastime – and a personal favourite – is mushroom foraging.
Prized finds include porcini and chanterelles, and on this occasion, I was lucky enough to find black horn mushrooms.
Naturally, I spent a lot of time in the sauna, often combined with cold dips in four-degree lake or sea water, which is supposedly very good for one’s health.
I also enjoyed a few days in Paris, which somehow resulted in me acquiring a shiny new instrument!
Please tell us about your final freezing weekend in Lapland.
Around the winter solstice when there’s only a few hours of sunlight, Helsinki and Turku are often quite dark and dreary, so I wanted to head north to experience some ‘real’ Finnish winter.
I managed to squeeze in a final trip to Lapland on my last weekend in the country.
Temperatures dropped below –20°C, there was around 50 cm of snow, the aurora borealis put on a fine display, and the sun briefly appeared on the horizon, lighting up the quintessential snow-covered trees and fells.
Amazing, thanks Julian!
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