After years of heartfelt requests, Thomas Albertus Irnberger has granted our wish and made us very happy with his Sibelius project. T. A. Irnberger's concept of combining a great violin concerto with chamber music works by the same composer follows the unpretentious idea of a complex presentation of a composer rather than the joint presentation of "great" violin concertos on one CD - which does not make Sibelius' violin concerto any smaller. Here presented in collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Doron Salomon, it is one of the six or seven most-performed concertos in the violin literature and, with it's turbulent genesis at the beginning of the 20th century, one of the great works of late Romanticism. The elaborate revisions and new versions have given the work a stringency that is hard to resist. The following violin miniatures on this CD, recorded with Irnberger's busy piano partner Michael Korstick, were composed in the later years between 1905 and 1929.

Sibelius studied the violin in his youth, and actively entertained the prospect of a career as a professional violinist for much of his student life. After graduating from the Helsinki Music Institute, in 1890, he went to Vienna to continue his studies, and while there he even auditioned (unsuccessfully) for a place in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. So, it comes as no surprise that the instrument plays an important place in his compositional output. What might be surprising is that he wrote only one concerto – this might perhaps be due to the difficult conception of the work. The first performance received mixed reviews, and led to extensive revision of the score. It was only when Jascha Heifetz in the 1930s started to perform the concerto regularly that it gained its place in the standard repertoire. Although there was no second concerto, Sibelius’s numerous other works for violin and orchestra are no mere miniatures, as the recordings on this album amply demonstrate. The acclaimed international virtuoso James Ehnes is accompanied here by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Edward Gardner.

Although Sibelius wrote around a hundred songs over a period of more than thirty years - mainly settings of Swedish texts, with eight in German and only a handful in Finnish - they have suffered comparative neglect alongside hi.

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Tretyakov/Fedoseyev/Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra.

Classical Music

Alpha and omega, beginning and end: these two works, his First and Seventh symphonies, bracket his compositions. + In the ensuing 25 years six other symphonies emerged, and their characteristic tonal colorings, austere Nordic temperament and innovative formal conception carved out a place for Jean Sibelius. + In recognition of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Jean Sibelius, the Uppsala Chamber Orchestra and principal conductor Paul Mägi held concerts during which these two symphonies were performed and recorded live for this CD release on the Swedish Society/Naxos label. + This album follows on a previously released CD on the same label featuring the composer’s Third and Fourth symphonies, with the Fourth not only demarking the middle point of Sibelius’s symphony output but also his finest, most well known and most somber work of its kind.

Classical Music

� The idea of malinconia in the 19th c. covered a myriad of romantic notions, so to simply translate it as "melancholy" does the term injustice. � It subsumes many other emotional states as well - dejection, gloom, unknown sadness, desperation, depression and even frustration. Each language has evolved it's own terms, and interpretations differ from region to region. � Malinconia in sunny Italy or Spain is quite different from melancholy in Norway and in Finland, with their long, harsh winters. � The Nordic variant is expressed here in various musical examples.