Commissioned by the 2005 Canary Islands Festival for the Finnish Radio Orchestra, Boreas (north wind) is intended to refer both to who made the commission and to its performer, end points of this trip from north to south. Beyond that the name has no programmatic or descriptive intent.

This symphony, approximately 24 minutes long, is divided into four movements which succeed each other without break and share a good number of common elements. In addition all four movements share a roughly ternary structure.