This is the first of three volumes featuring the five Beethoven Piano Concertos and the piano version of the Violin Concerto, all performed by Olli Mustonen in the role as soloist and conductor of the Tapiola Sinfonietta. Mustonen is known for delivering a fresh, visionary reading of popular standard repertoire music, such as Beethoven's concertos which he has never recorded before. The chamber orchestra Tapiola Sinfonietta and Olli Mustonen have maintained a close relationship for years, accompanying this ambitious recording project with acclaimed tour performances. Mustonen, who is also a published composer, is playing his own cadenzas in the First Concerto.

Olli Mustonen crowns his acclaimed cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos with recordings of the famous concertos nos. 4 and 5. In line with the two earlier installments, he performs these two virtuoso works simultaneously as pianist and conductor - a demanding practice in line with Beethoven’s intentions, which can however be only seldom experienced in today’s concert life or on disc. Mustonen develops his visionary approach to these works together with the renowned chamber orchestra Tapiola Sinfonietta; together they have toured Europe with this program to much acclaim.

Seeking inspiration from multiple sources, the theme of Mustonen’s 2nd Symphony, ‘Johannes Angelos’ (2013), is the ancient city of Constantinople and its mysticism. Mustonen’s 3rd Symphony, ‘Taivaanvalot’ (Heavenly Lights) (2020) is based on a section in the Finnish national epic Kalevala and inspired by the cosmic and shamanistic elements in Finnish mythology. In this recording, the solo part is being sung by internationally acclaimed tenor Ian Bostridge.

Belying its young composer’s reputation as the enfant terrible of early Soviet music, ‘the most popular cello sonata of the twentieth century’—Steven Isserlis’s verdict on the Shostakovich—takes its place alongside two other Russian masterpieces, from pre-Revolutionary Prokofiev to Kabalevsky in the Khrushchev era.

This is the first of three volumes featuring Beethoven's five piano concertos performed by Olli Mustonen, acting here as both soloist and conductor of the Tapiola Sinfonietta. The Finnish musician is known for delivering fresh, visionary readings of popular standard repertoire music, such as Beethoven's concertos which he had never recorded before. Mustonen has maintained a close relationship with chamber orchestra Tapiola Sinfonietta, accompanying this ambitious recording project with acclaimed tour performances. Also a published composer, Mustonen is playing his own cadenzas in the First Concerto.

This release is an important milestone in the collaboration between the Finnish composer and pianist Olli Mustonen and the Norwegian string quartet Engegård Quartet.