While globalization advances, all countries staunchly retain two unique features: their distinctive national flag and a bonding national anthem. The anthems reflect an enormous indigenous diversity, but relatively few are generally known by citizens of other nations, making any comprehensive compendium a source of endless interest and discovery. We invite you to take a musical tour of Naxos’ definitive set of national and regional anthems, from Algeria to Kuwait. Lapland to Zanzibar, and all stops in between. You’ll be delighted by the gems that are waiting to be discovered and compiled into either personal or family favorites. And you can check out the flags in the process with our informative supporting booklets! Welcome to the Naxos set of The Complete National Anthems of the World.

Josef Foerster was by all accounts a contented soul, and this shows in his music, which is generally open and optimistic in character. Certainly the Festive Overture and the tone poem Meine Jugend fall into this category: he sounds a bit like Richard Strauss without the danger or decadence. Symphony No. 4, subtitled "Easter Eve", strikes a deeper note, and it's a lovely work. There is no competition for the two shorter pieces, which are well played and conducted and make a very good impression. Foerster lived to the ripe old age of 91, and he wrote a ton of music, so who knows what other gems are out there waiting to be discovered.

In the symphony (Foerster's best-known piece along with the tone poem Cyrano de Bergerac) conductor Lance Friedel is about six minutes slower (out of 40-plus) than Smetácek on Supraphon, and some listeners will prefer the latter's livelier tempos. (There's also an historical recording under Kubelik that really isn't competitive on account of very dated sonics.) Questions of tempo aside, if you didn't know the Smetácek you'd surely not care at all, because Friedel has the measure of the piece and projects its gentle loveliness just as effectively. Also, the vivid engineering gives the organ-reinforced conclusion plenty of the necessary gravitas, and at the Naxos price you can hardly go wrong. This is well-made, attractive music that fans of late-Romanticism should certainly hear.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Alexander Moyzes’ symphonic cycle is the best-known by a Slovak composer. His synthesis of Slovak influences and contemporary trends in European music informs every strand of his compositions. The Symphony No. 7, Op. 50 is his largest and most powerful orchestral statement, which he dedicated to the memory of his young daughter. Peasant scenes, folk dances and exceptional lyric beauty form the bedrock of a passionate and dramatic work. Written as a response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Symphony No. 8 ’21.08.1968,’ Op. 64 is a brooding lament that shares affinities with Shostakovich’s symphonic writing. This album is volume 3 in a series of reissues from the Marco Polo label. These releases remain as the only easily accessible reference, and with recordings and performances that still sound fresh and invigorating, we felt it was time for a revival. Of the original release, International Record Review wrote: “the Seventh Symphony… opens, in a beautiful albeggiante pastorale- quite the loveliest thing I’ve heard from Moyzes- which leads into a jolly, even rumbustious, folk dance. Ladislav Slovak, who died in 1999, does Moyzes as proud in these two releases as in the previous recordings in the cycle: reliable playing, good sound.”