Richard Strauss premiered Sibelius' Violin Concerto and this concerto has enjoyed an unstoppable series of triumphs through the concert halls of the world since. Sibelius came from what was then a Russian province, the Grand Duchy of Finland, and was younger than Strauss by just one year.

It is worth noting here that there seems to be a particular affinity for this work among women violinists. The violin repertoire is hardly small, but it tends to be one-sided in the works generally chosen by performers. In her recent CD releases, however, Baiba Skride has endeavoured to offer carefully considered, stimulating programme combinations that can prompt a joy in discovery on the part of her listeners.

For Baiba, coming from the Baltic, it was natural – both in terms of her biography and her native geography – that she would want to place the Violin Concerto by Sibelius in this, his anniversary year, alongside the sole violin concerto by his exact Baltic contemporary Carl Nielsen (1865-1931). And perhaps, above and beyond Baiba Skride’s own naturalness of manner, we can also hear a certain worldliness and directness here in her approach to the Sibelius Concerto – a work so holy to violinists – that allows us to discern a special familiarity with it on her part. Incidentally, both composers were trained violinists who earned their living for a while from their instrument.

Skride here also includes Sibelius’s two Serenades of 1912/13 for solo violin and orchestra – two similarly original examples of his art of composition that are cast in a very different tone and in a smaller-scale genre.

Santtu-Matias Rouvali was the July 2015 'Rising Star: Great Artists of Tomorrow' in BBC Music Magazine. Rouvali, now 29, made his conducting debut with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2009, and last season, took over from Hannu Lintu as chief conductor of the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra. There, his flamboyant performances and imaginative programming have gone down a treat.