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Janine Jansen's 1997 debut with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw signaled the rise of a major violin talent. Jansen wasn't well-known outside of the Netherlands until her 2002 London debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy. Thereafter, invitations to appear with the leading European and American orchestras poured in, and in 2003, she was awarded the Dutch Music Prize, the highest artistic award given in the Netherlands. With a formidable technique and immaculate tone, fashioning her interpretations with both imagination and maturity, Jansen is regarded as one of her generation's foremost violinists. Her repertory is broad, taking in works by J.S. Bach, Vivaldi, and Beethoven and modern composers like Robert Helps and Richard Dubugnon. In 2021, Jansen was accompanied by Sir Antonio Pappano on the album 12 Stradivari, featuring Jansen performing on 12 of the legendary luthier's surviving violins.

Jansen was born in Soest, Netherlands, on January 7, 1978. She began lessons on the violin at six and had advanced studies at the University of Utrecht. Her list of teachers includes Philippe Hirschhorn, Coosje Wijzenbeek, and Boris Belkin. Following her 1997 Concertgebouw debut, Jansen slowly began building her career abroad. From 1998, she regularly took part in the Spectrum Concerts Berlin, a chamber music series of the Berlin Philharmonic, and in 2001, she performed the Brahms Violin Concerto, Op. 77, with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland. Jansen was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2002 until 2004. While her London debut with Ashkenazy in 2002 ushered in more concert opportunities, it also led to several successful recordings. In 2003, Jansen founded the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht and has served as its guest artistic director since. In the 2007-2008 season, Jansen made impressive debuts with the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras, and in October 2009, she debuted with the Berlin Philharmonic in an acclaimed performance of the Britten Violin Concerto, Op. 15. Jansen's continued performances with the Concertgebouw earned her the Johannes Vermeer Prize from the Dutch government in 2018. She has been a violin professor at the Haute École de Musique Vaud Valais Fribourg since 2019.

Naxos issued her first album in 2003, a recording of works by John Harbison, and Decca followed in the two succeeding years with an album of various concert works simply called Janine Jansen and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. While the latter recording generated some controversy, it became a digital best-seller and received an Echo Award in 2006. Two more Echo Awards followed for her Decca recordings of Mendelssohn and Bruch concertos (2007) and Beethoven and Britten concertos (2009). In 2011, Decca issued Jansen's first recital disc, Beau Soir, a collection of French works featuring accompaniment by pianist Itamar Golan. Jansen joined Martin Fröst, Lucas Debargue, and Torleif Thedéen for a 2017 Sony Classical recording of Messiaen's Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps. Jansen was brought to London in 2020 for a project dreamed up by violin dealer J&A Beare's managing director, Steven Smith, to play and record 12 of the surviving violins built by Antonio Stradivari. The logistics of Jansen's travel to London and transporting the near-priceless instruments during the coronavirus pandemic added additional difficulty to the project, but Jansen was able to spend time practicing with each instrument and chose a work that would optimally display the sound of each violin. The resulting album, 12 Stradivari, was released on Decca in 2021, with frequent collaborator Pappano as accompanist. The project was filmed by director Gerry Fox for the documentary Janine Jansen: Falling for Stradivari. ~ Robert Cummings & Keith Finke

Finland's Jean Sibelius is perhaps the most important composer associated with nationalism in music and one of the most influential in the development of the symphony and symphonic poem.

Sibelius was born in southern Finland, the second of three children. His physician father left the family bankrupt, owing to his financial extravagance, a trait that, along with heavy drinking, he would pass on to Jean. Jean showed talent on the violin and at age nine composed his first work for it, Rain Drops. In 1885 Sibelius entered the University of Helsinki to study law, but after only a year found himself drawn back to music. He took up composition studies with Martin Wegelius and violin with Mitrofan Wasiliev, then Hermann Csillag. During this time he also became a close friend of Busoni. Though Sibelius auditioned for the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, he would come to realize he was not suited to a career as a violinist.

In 1889 Sibelius traveled to Berlin to study counterpoint with Albert Becker, where he also was exposed to new music, particularly that of Richard Strauss. In Vienna he studied with Karl Goldmark and then Robert Fuchs, the latter said to be his most effective teacher. Now Sibelius began pondering the composition of the Kullervo symphonic poem, based on the Kalevala legends. Sibelius returned to Finland, taught music, and in June 1892, married Aino Järnefelt, daughter of General Alexander Järnefelt, head of one of the most influential families in Finland. The premiere of Kullervo in April 1893 created a veritable sensation, Sibelius thereafter being looked upon as the foremost Finnish composer. The Lemminkäinen suite, begun in 1895 and premiered on April 13, 1896, has come to be regarded as the most important music by Sibelius up to that time.

In 1897 the Finnish Senate voted to pay Sibelius a short-term pension, which some years later became a lifetime conferral. The honor was in lieu of his loss of an important professorship in composition at the music school, the position going to Robert Kajanus. The year 1899 saw the premiere of Sibelius' First Symphony, which was a tremendous success, to be sure, but not quite of the magnitude of that of Finlandia (1899; rev. 1900).

In the next decade Sibelius would become an international figure in the concert world. Kajanus introduced several of the composer's works abroad; Sibelius himself was invited to Heidelberg and Berlin to conduct his music. In March 1901, the Second Symphony was received as a statement of independence for Finland, although Sibelius always discouraged attaching programmatic ideas to his music. His only concerto, for violin, came in 1903. The next year Sibelius built a villa outside of Helsinki, named "Ainola" after his wife, where he would live for his remaining 53 years. After a 1908 operation to remove a throat tumor, Sibelius was implored to abstain from alcohol and tobacco, a sanction he followed until 1915. It is generally believed that the darkening of mood in his music during these years owes something to the health crisis.

Sibelius made frequent trips to England, having visited first in 1905 at the urging of Granville Bantock. In 1914 he traveled to Norfolk, CT, where he conducted his newest work The Oceanides. Sibelius spent the war years in Finland working on his Fifth Symphony. Sibelius traveled to England for the last time in 1921. Three years later he completed his Seventh Symphony, and his last work was the incidental music for The Tempest (1925). For his last 30 years Sibelius lived a mostly quiet life, working only on revisions and being generally regarded as the greatest living composer of symphonies. In 1955 his 90th birthday was widely celebrated throughout the world with many performances of his music. Sibelius died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1957. ~ Robert Cummings

The Oslo Philharmonic is Norway's flagship orchestra, with concerts often broadcast nationally and a distinguished recording catalog that has spread its work internationally. Many of the orchestra's conductors have been foreigners; it flourished especially in the 1980s and '90s under the leadership of Latvian Mariss Jansons, who came to Oslo for his first conducting post outside the Soviet Union.

The modern Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra evolved from several earlier groups: Edvard Grieg's Christiana Musikforening and the Christiana Theater Orchestra (Christiana was the former name of Oslo). In 1919, these coalesced into the Filharmonisk Selskaps Orkester, or Orchestra of the Philharmonic Company; the name Oslo Philharmonic (Oslo-Filharmonien) was first used in 1979. In the 1920s and '30s, the orchestra prospered, attracting top foreign conductors and composer/conductors including Artur Nikisch, Maurice Ravel, and, a week before the Nazi invasion of Norway in 1940, Wilhelm Furtwängler. The orchestra's concerts were heard on Norwegian radio from the early 1920s.

The orchestra's activities were suspended during World War II, but the postwar years brought new energy and exposure. Sweden's Herbert Blomstedt, who held the baton from 1962 to 1968, was the orchestra's first non-Norwegian conductor; he took the group on a tour of major European musical capitals, and the Finn Okko Kamu (1975-1979) led an American tour. His successor, Janssons, brought the orchestra to new heights of international renown, signing a longstanding recording contract with Britain's EMI label. The orchestra moved into the new Oslo Concert Hall in 1977, but the hall has been controversial; Janssons resigned his post in 2000 after a dispute with the hall's owner, the Oslo city government, over its acoustics. He was succeeded by the American veteran André Previn (2002-2006), Finland's Jukka-Pekka Saraste (2006-2013), and the Russian Vasily Petrenko (2013-2020). Finland's Klaus Mäkelä was slated to assume the conducting post in 2020.

The orchestra has maintained a busy recording schedule, releasing as many as four albums a year on the Simax, Dacapo, and Lawo Classics labels. In 2019, on the latter imprint, Petrenko led the orchestra in a recording of the Richard Strauss tone poems Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30, and Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40. ~ James Manheim

By breathing new life into the symphony, sonata, and concerto, Sergey Prokofiev emerged as one of the truly original musical voices of the 20th century. Bridging the worlds of pre-revolutionary Russia and the Stalinist Soviet Union, Prokofiev enjoyed a successful worldwide career as a composer and pianist. As in the case of most other Soviet-era composers, his creative life and his music suffered under the duress of official Party strictures. Despite the detrimental personal and professional effects of such outside influences, Prokofiev continued to produce music marked by a singular skill, inventiveness, and élan until the end of his career.

As an only child (his sisters had died in infancy), Prokofiev lived a comfortable, privileged life, which gave him a heightened sense of self-worth and an indifference to criticism, an attitude that would change as he matured. His mother taught him piano, and he began composing around the age of five. He eventually took piano, theory, and composition lessons from Reyngol'd Gliere, then enrolled at the St. Petersburg Conservatory when he was 13. He took theory with Lyadov, orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov, and became lifelong friends with Nicolai Myaskovsky. After graduating, he began performing in St. Petersburg and in Moscow, then in Western Europe, all the while writing more and more music. Prokofiev's earliest renown, therefore, came as a result of both his formidable pianistic technique and the works he wrote to show it off. He sprang onto the Russian musical scene with works like the Sarcasms, Op. 17 (1912-1914) and Visions fugitives, Op. 22 (1915-1917), and his first few piano sonatas. He also wrote orchestral works, concertos, and operas, and met with Diaghilev about producing ballets. The years immediately after the Revolution were spent in the U.S., where Prokofiev tried to follow Rachmaninov's lead and make his way as a pianist/composer. His commission for The Love for Three Oranges came from the Chicago Opera in 1919, but overall Prokofiev was disappointed by his American reception, and he returned to Europe in 1922. He married singer Lina Llubera in 1923, and the couple moved to Paris. He continued to compose on commission, meeting with mixed success from both critics and the public. He had maintained contact with the Soviet Union, and even toured there in 1927. The Love for Three Oranges was part of the Soviet opera repertory, and the government commissioned the music for the film Lieutenant Kijé and other pieces. In 1936, he decided to return to the Soviet Union with his wife and two sons. Most of his compositions from just after his return, including many for children, were written with the political atmosphere in mind. One work which wasn't was the 1936 ballet Romeo and Juliet, which became an international success. He attempted another opera in 1939, Semyon Kotko, but was met with hostility from cultural ideologues. During World War II, Prokofiev and other artists were evacuated from Moscow. He spent the time in various places within the U.S.S.R. and produced propaganda music, but also violin sonatas, his "War Sonatas" for piano, the String Quartet No. 2, the opera War and Peace, and the ballet Cinderella. In 1948, with the resolution that criticized almost all Soviet composers, several of Prokofiev's works were banned from performance. His health declined and he became more insecure. The composer's last creative efforts were directed largely toward the production of "patriotic" and "national" works, typified by the cantata Flourish, Mighty Homeland (1947), and yet Prokofiev also continued to produce worthy if lesser-known works like the underrated ballet The Stone Flower (1943). In a rather bitter coincidence, Prokofiev died on March 5, 1953, the same day as Joseph Stalin. ~ TiVo Staff

Conductor Klaus Mäkelä emerged rapidly in the late 2010s and early 2020s to become one of the most prominent figures on the musical scene in Scandinavia and beyond. In 2024, at the age of just 28, he was named future chief conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Mäkelä was born in Helsinki on January 17, 1996. His family was musical: his father, Sami Mäkelä, was a violinist, and his mother, Taru Myöhänen-Mäkela, was a pianist. At 12, as a singer in the chorus of the Finnish National Opera, Klaus became interested in conducting. He studied both conducting and cello at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. His conducting teacher there was Jorma Panula, and he took cello courses with Hannu Kiiski, Timo Hanhinen, and Marko Ylönen. For a time, as Mäkelä made concerto appearances with top regional orchestras around Finland, such as the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra, and the Jyväskylä Sinfonia, it seemed as though he might choose a career path as a cellist. He performed on cello in chamber groups and appeared at several leading Finnish music festivals.

He then made a guest-conducting appearance with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in September of 2017. After that single appearance, Mäkelä was hired as the orchestra's principal guest conductor, beginning with the 2018-2019 season. He was the youngest individual ever to hold a post with a conductor title in that organization. The pattern repeated itself when Mäkelä guest conducted the Oslo Philharmonic, and he was appointed chief conductor for a term beginning in 2020. His contract was extended by four years before he had even assumed his post. His meteoric rise reached another stage after he made a guest appearance with the Orchestre de Paris in June of 2019; a year later, the orchestra named him music director, beginning in 2022. Mäkelä also became the artistic director of Finland's Turku Music Festival in 2018. He has served as an Artist in Association with the Tapiola Sinfonietta.

In addition to these regular posts, Mäkelä has made guest appearances with a variety of world-class ensembles. In 2022, the year he released his debut album (a complete set of the Sibelius symphonies with the Oslo Philharmonic), he was named artistic partner of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, with a five-year term as chief conductor set to begin in 2027. His profile was raised still higher by a romantic relationship with star pianist Yuja Wang, but the couple split up in early 2024. In 2023 and 2024, Mäkelä issued two albums of music by Stravinsky with the Orchestre de Paris on the Decca label. In 2024, after first guest-conducting the group two years earlier, he became the music director-designate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Riccardo Muti. His initial five-year contract was set to begin in 2027. ~ James Manheim