For its final concert of the 2021–22 season and Osmo Vänskä’s last as artistic director, the Minnesota Orchestra chose to present Mahler’s mammoth Eighth Symphony, which calls for one of the largest complement of performers in the history of music, a symbol of the communitarian spirit of collective cultural, social and religious-philosophical endeavour in what has been referred to as a ‘Mass for the Masses’.

For the latest instalment in their Mahler series, the Minnesota Orchestra under the direction of Osmo Vänskä presents what many consider to be the pinnacle of the Austrian composer’s entire work, the Ninth Symphony, his last completed symphony.

At the end of a career spent between his native Korea and Germany, during which he produced works that span the musical traditions of both countries, Isang Yun expressed a wish to limit himself ‘to what is substantial, in order to transmit more peace, more goodness, more purity and warmth into this world’.

The Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä, music director since 2003 of the Minnesota Orchestra, long ago proved himself a formidable interpreter of Nordic music in general and Sibelius in particular. This symphonic cycle – two highly praised discs are already out – is now complete, with this album of the pliant, classical Symphony No 3, the little known and underrated No 6 and the mysterious, enthralling single-movement No 7. The playing is polished and detailed, now springy and buoyant, now occluded and chilling. Tempi are slightly broad but convincingly so. From the plunging energy of the opening of the Third Symphony to the bleak, raw ending of the Seventh, this is a gripping listen.

As well known as the music itself is, the full background to Finlandia, the great symphonic poem composed by Finn Jean Sibelius, was unfamiliar to me until very recently. It turns out that Finlandia was originally part of a larger work that Sibelius composed in 1899 with the rather unartistic title "Press Celebrations Music". The seventh movement of that work, "Tableau 6, Suomi herää (Finland Awakes)", was later reworked into a stand-alone piece and became known as Finlandia, and this is how we have generally heard it performed since that time. It has become recognized as one of the most important national songs of Finland, but it is not the national anthem, that is Maamme ("Our Land").

There is a self-selecting audience for this disc. People who want to know what the withdrawn original version of the Violin Concerto of Sibelius will have to hear this recording by violinist Leonidas Kavakos with Osmo Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony. Sibelius withdrew the version of the Concerto premiered in 1904 shortened it, tightened it and focused it and premiered a second version in 1905. The revised version became a warhorse in the stable of violin concertos, but the original version disappeared until this world-premiere recording was released in 1990.