Although early advocates such as Robert Kajanus, Sir Thomas Beecham, and Serge Koussevitzky had conducted many of Sibelius's symphonies for gramophone in the 1930s and 1940s, none of these Sibelians recorded all seven. Instead, the earliest complete traversal dates to 1953, four years before the composer's death on 20 September 1957; it is by Sixten Ehrling and the Stockholm Radio Orchestra, recorded from 1952 to 1953 for the Swedish label Metronome Records (released by Mercury Records in the United States). Ehrling had outpaced Anthony Collins and the London Symphony Orchestra, whose cycle—recorded from 1952 to 1955 on Decca Records—was concurrent with Ehrling's but arrived second. Since these two pioneering examples, the Sibelius cycle has, as of May 2025, been recorded an additional 49 times. The most recently completed (51st) cycle, finished in 2025, is by Jukka-Pekka Saraste and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra; an additional two projected cycles are in progress, according to press releases.
