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Johan Tallgren’s FMQ guest column on Sibelius’s birthday, the Day of Finnish Music 2015.

"It is meaningless to select a ‘best’ recording when musicians have such different views of the same pieces of music, but I can say that you would be hard-pressed to find more satisfying performances anywhere else."

"This was an intelligent decision: to record an anniversary cycle of orchestral Sibelius looking sideways at his bountiful incidental music and ‘minor’ orchestral works."

"Janne Mertanen is a reliable guide to this unfailingly attractive and sometimes moving repertoire: his rhythms are precise and his textures clear."

"Sväng, the Finnish harmonica quartet, blows fresh air to Sibelius celebrations with arrangements of composer’s well-known works."

In summer 2015 fiddler Emilia Lajunen will undertook a concert tour of Finland by bicycle. Two months, more than 20 concerts at music festivals, over 2000 kilometres. The idea of the tour was to return to the roots of the Finnish tradition of vagabond fiddlers. On the other hand, the idea was to save the world by showing that a CO2-free tour is possible even today.

"As an all-round survey, Tiikkaja’s biography earns its place as a solid basic treatise on the life and music of Einojuhani Rautavaara."

"...Delivering wave-like walls of shoegaze-inspired guitar bliss and melodies filled with youthful yearning, Dominique is destined to break a vast number of hearts."

"After all the hype around HCE’s 2013 debut, the expectations were high for the follow-up. Luckily, the 11-member Finnish-Beninese collective manages to meet these high expectations..."