This special edition with three albums celebrates Peteris Vasks' 80th birthday in 2026 and contains Vasks' first three award-winning albums released on Ondine. Vasks' debut album on Ondine, featuring his 2nd Symphony and the violin concerto "Distant Light," marked a major international breakthrough for the composer and won two Cannes Classical Awards in 2004, including "Album of the Year."

Reviews

FonoForum: "Dramatically refined and beautifully sounding processes that above all convey an impression of great authenticity. The CD combines two recent works by Vasks (Symphony No. 2 & Distant Light), which are particularly characteristic of his personal style."

FonoForum: "The sense of dramatic intensification is as impressive as the colorful orchestration. The Cello Concerto, completed in 1994, is much more compact, also more aggressive and harder, with its five movements forming a gripping, vaulted architecture, in which echoes of Shostakovich can occasionally be heard without imitating his style."

FonoForum: "That Vasks' religiosity has deep roots is evident in the pieces: the musical language is simple, free from dissonant outbursts. Not quite as ascetic as Pärt's, the content is conveyed with a melancholic fervor that is not unfamiliar with romantic undertones. The interpretations owe nothing to the earnestness of what is being expressed."