Struggles and triumphs

The popularity of Sibelius in the twentieth century was, to some extent, tied to the rise of commercially available sound recordings. Although he had already stopped writing new music by the 1930s, his symphonies in particular were championed by a number of conductors – Kajanus, Beecham and Koussevitzky – who also happened to be pioneers of the recording studio. In the decades since those earliest recordings, the symphonies have never suffered from a lack of availability; yet the highest peaks in the catalogue – Karajan (who never recorded the Third symphony), Barbirolli and, more recently, Neeme Järvi – sit only slightly above a diverse array of other worthy interpretations that, taken together, offer a reasonably consistent picture of Sibelius the symphonist.

But for those who would question the need for yet another Sibelius cycle in…