Wikipedia:Today's featured list/February 21, 2022
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The seven symphonies of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, written between 1899 and 1924, are the core of his oeuvre and stalwarts of the standard concert repertoire. Many of classical music's conductor–orchestra partnerships have recorded the complete set, colloquially known as the "Sibelius cycle". Although early advocates such as Robert Kajanus, Sir Thomas Beecham, and Serge Koussevitzky had conducted many of Sibelius's symphonies for gramophone in the 1930s and 1940s, none of these Sibelians recorded all seven. The earliest complete traversal dates to 1953, four years before the composer's death on 20 September 1957; it is by Sixten Ehrling and the Stockholm Radio Orchestra, recorded from 1952–1953 for the Swedish label Metronome Records (released by Mercury Records in the United States). Ehrling had outpaced Anthony Collins and the London Symphony Orchestra, whose cycle—recorded from 1952–1955 on Decca Records—was concurrent with Ehrling's but arrived second. Since the pioneering examples of Ehrling and Collins, the Sibelius cycle has been recorded an additional 42 times as of July 2021. (Full list...)