Holger Fransman

In Finland every musician knows the great horn player and teacher Holger Fransman. He is one of the most respected figures, and one of the most attractive, in this country’s musical life.

He was a member of the Helsinki Philharmonic from 1928, first as an extra, then as 3rd horn. In 1937 he moved to solo horn and stayed there until his retirement in 1969. The Sibelius Academy of Helsinki created the post of professor of horn for him and he held it until 1978. He has trained almost all Finland’s current horn players, including the now famous young Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who studied the horn with him for some time.

Holger Fransman was born in Helsinki in 1909. He remembers the Tsar’s Russian troops — parading in their splendour, singing in two or three parts — and the characteristic smell of their boots.

At the age of ten he became a boarding pupil at the military music school, where he made a start with several wind instruments. In 1926 he made a decision in favour of the horn. Why?

The military band had to go to Sweden and it was short of horns. That’s what determined the course of my career!

In 1928, doing extra work at the Helsinki Philharmonic, he started to look around for someone who could help him to improve. The following year, as radio spread, he heard the Stiegler Horn Quintet of Vienna. He was astounded! He wrote to Professor Karl Stiegler, did not rest until he got a study grant, and went to Vienna for several consecutive summers to study first with Stiegler, then later with his nephew Gottfried von Freiberg. The two great masters of the Viennese horn did a great deal to further his artistic career.