Sibelius: Symphonies Nos 1 & 4

GRAMMY winner 2014. Best Orchestral Performance

”This is a thoroughly compelling account of Sibelius’s enigmatic Fourth Symphony. Vänskä is one of the greatest living Sibelius conductors and knows how to bring out the despair at the heart of this spare, icy, almost rebarbative masterpiece.” The Daily Telegraph, 27/4 2013

The seven Sibelius symphonies span a quarter of a century in all (1899–1924) and encompass a complete world. Were one to choose two that reveal the furthermost poles of his symphonic art, they would be the two recorded here, the First and Fourth; the one an essay in the received
tradi tion, the other a work so original and inward-looking as to open up an entirely new world, and inconceivable from the vantage point of the 1890s.