This special three-album edition celebrates Peteris Vasks' 80th birthday in 2026 and includes Vasks' first three award-winning albums released on Ondine. The debut album of Vasks' music on Ondine with his 2nd Symphony and the violin concerto "Distant Light" was a major international breakthrough for the composer and won two Cannes Classical Awards in 2004, including "Album of the Year". Reviews FonoForum: "Dramaturgically refined and beautiful-sounding processes, which above all convey the impression of great truthfulness. 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 just as impressive as the colorful orchestration. The Cello Concerto, completed in 1994, is much more compact, also more aggressive and harder, whose five movements form a catchy, arched architecture and which occasionally allows echoes of Shostakovich to be heard without imitating his style." FonoForum: "The fact that Vasks' religiosity has deep roots is evident in the pieces: the tonal language is simple, free of dissonant outbursts. Not quite as ascetic as Pärt's, the content is conveyed with a melancholy fervour that is no stranger to romantic undertones. The interpretations owe nothing to the seriousness of what is being said."