Hannu Lintu conducts Sibelius's Symphony No. 2

Finnish maestro Hannu Lintu presents and conducts the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in all seven bold and unique symphonies by their celebrated compatriot Jean Sibelius!

“My symphonies are music conceived and worked out solely in terms of music," said Jean Sibelius about a genre to which he contributed seven masterpieces, "with no literary basis … a symphony should be music first and last.”

Written almost immediately after the First and inspired by a brief and inspiring sojourn in Italy, the optimistic Second Symphony (1902) navigates an ocean of motifs and themes that recur and disperse throughout the work, pushing up against the limits of the paradigmatic four-movement symphonic structure. The thrilling result is a late triumph in a genre that was increasingly left behind as bold experiments by composers like Stravinsky, Debussy, and Schoenberg would come to alter the course of music history...