the New Zealanders' playing is expert, and the well-balanced and rounded recording gives due weight to Sibelius's double bass and tuba parts.

You don't get any surprises in this 'big picture' Second Symphony, just clarity of structure and effective pacing - particularly in the Andante, which unfolds with great patience and astute shifts in speed. All that care, and then conductor Inkinen bears his soul just in time for the build-up to the big tune - a magnificent effect...This Karelia's intermezzo is one of the subtlest and effecting on record.

The third volume of Inkinen’s Sibelius cycle with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra boasts the same sure interpretative instincts, warm-hearted playing and excellent sound as its predecessors. Inkinen takes an unashamedly romantic view of the Second Symphony, and the Karelia Suite provides an atmospheric filler.

this is a scrupulously played and artfully coloured performance (the horn quartet, for instance, is impressively rich). It's also unfailingly attentive to the musical architecture...[Inkinen] has such unerring control over large-scale development (especially long-range dynamics and tempo relationships) that the music never loses direction

In Sibelius’s Second Symphony, he elicits a sound that is rich, bottom-heavy, but always transparent, the colours deep, the inner textures clear...Most impressive, however, is his generous, intelligent shaping of the work, whose climactic coalescings he relishes for their own sake, rather than to self-glorify.