Steeped in an atmosphere of ancient Scottish musical tradition, Benjamin Britten' setting of texts by Robert Burns in a Birthday Hansel was his final song-cycle.

FUCHS, L.: Complete Music for Unaccompanied Viola

Described by the composer as a kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images and designs of oriental character, Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Sheherazade has delighted listeners for generations. The rapturous solo violin plays the part of the slave who narrates the wonderful tales of the Arabian Nights, including the adventures of Sinbad, Prince Kalender and the Festival of Baghdad. The suite, or ‘musical pictures’, from The Tale of Tsar Saltan depicts episodes from this magical opera, from which the mischievous Flight of the Bumblebee is also drawn. The Seattle Symphony is one of the world’s most recorded orchestras, with 12 GRAMMY nominations and two Emmy Awards.

Following on from their acclaimed recording of Italian Suites, the respectively "exemplary" and "excellent" Sergio Bosi and Riccardo Bartoli return with a programme full of surprises and mainly world premiere recordings.

Howard Blake is well known for his superbly effective film scores, and this programme brings premiere string quartet recordings of the award-winning music for a Month in the Country and the famous Walking in the Air theme from the Snowman.

FranCois-Andre Danican Philidor pursued successful parallel careers as the composer of over 21 operas and as a chess virtuoso, known not least for his skill in simultaneous blindfold games.

The four pieces on this disc span three decades of Giles Swayne's choral music output, their striking echoes of Latin plainchant, Tudor polyphony and traditional African music providing contrasting and complementary strands characteristic of this much-travelled composer. Magnificat I draws on the music of the Senegalese Jola people and the Ba-Benezele of the Congo. His moving threnody, This Silent Land, scored for 40-part choir and solo cello, combines words from Requiem Mass and Christina Rossetti's poetry, while Stabat Mater is dedicated to the grieving mothers of Israel and Palestine.

With this fourth volume, Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen completes his cycle of Sibelius' numbered symphonies.

It’s a shame Arnold Bax, arch-Romantic that he was, isn’t better known for his piano music. Like Rachmaninoff and Medtner, he often thought of the piano in orchestral terms, both as a medium in its own right and as a sounding board for his ensemble works; and the music he composed for it is often as inspired and strikingly colorful as any tone poem or symphony he ever wrote.

Consider the Third Piano Sonata: completed in 1926, it was written between the Second and Third Symphonies. It is a richly emotive work in Bax’s typically paradoxical manner that intimately confides the most theatrically extravagant of feelings. With a stormily affective first movement, a lyrical lento moderato, and a passionate finale, the sonata gives us the composer at inspirational floodtide. It lacks the steel grimness that extends its powerful reach across the Piano Sonata No. 2, but is otherwise its equal, and well worth hearing. I’m not as convinced by the opening allegro giusto of the Fourth Piano Sonata, lighter in texture but flawed by an annoyingly bumptious first theme. Still, the second movement is a bewitching piece that has Bax clasping hands with Borodin; not all that surprising, given the British composer’s predilection for Russian classical music. Much the same criticism as I had for the first movement applies to the last, except that the darkly reflective second theme and its subsequent development is again Bax at his best.

The two sonatas are balanced on this release by a series of four short works presenting far more than the usual chip off the compositional workbench. Winter Waters is a somber miniature tone poem written during WW I and subtitled “Tragic Landscape.” Bax keeps the violence churning beneath a murky, active surface, in a piece that would have made a very effective orchestral work if it were only less pianistic in development. Water Music is actually a selection from Bax’s ballet, The Truth about the Russian Dancers, and easily the most memorable thing in a score more notable for its ability to change mood and direction in a candle’s flicker than sustain any musical idea. It is a very good tune, worked out to great advantage.

The main theme in Country-Tune is English, to be sure, but it’s given a few harmonic and melodic twists that again recall the Russian Nationalists, before being sent home to the Land of Constant but Temperate Rain. O Dame Get Up and Bake Your Pies is late Bax: 1945, with an air of Butterworth about it, an impression of leisurely variation drawing upon a creative spring without visible terminus. It flowed more slowly for the composer in his later years, but in short pieces like this and the Oliver Twist music, and longer works such as his Wind Concertante, Bax proved he had more to say, and with eloquence, too.

This is the second volume of an expected complete series of Bax’s piano music featuring Ashley Wass, the first British pianist to win first prize at the World Piano Competition (1997). It’s something of a coup for Naxos to acquire the services of this young, extremely talented musician in music for which he possesses both an obvious affinity and commitment. He displays an excellent technique, great self-confidence, a sense of showmanship, and a clear set of ideas about how these works should be performed. The allegro quasi Andante middle movement of the Fourth sonata (marked “very delicate throughout”) finds Wass delicate indeed, offering a refined dynamic palette matched to judicious tempos and a transparent tone. Yet, as the finale to the Piano Sonata No. 3 demonstrates, he’s equally capable of indulging Bax’s pleasure in a broad canvas, awash in more colors than I’ve heard from any new pianist in some time...

Barry Brenesal, FANFARE

The Franco-Lebanese composer and poet Bechara El-Khoury is a master of orchestration, and defines his artistic credo as that of 'setting to music human nature and it's passions'.

This recording restores some of Handel' finest but least-known music to the choir for which he wrote it and to the building where he performed it, probably for the first time since his own performances there.

The second of Tchaikovsky's three full length ballets, the Sleeping Beauty was initially given a lukewarm reception by the Tsar. Today it is regarded as the greatest achievement of Russian ballet music in the 19th century. Based on the Perrault fairy-tale La belle au bois dormant and choreographed by the legendary Petipa, this work overflows with radiant and joyous inventiveness. These highlights are taken from the complete recording on Naxos 8.550490-92, given * recommended status by the Penguin Guide which praises Andrew Mogrelia's conducting for it's 'warmth, grace and vitality'. Andrew Mogrelia has had a varied career of concerts, recording and work with major dance companies. He has worked with the English National, Dutch National, Finnish National, Norwegian National ballets, Netherlands Dance Theatre, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Australian Ballet, West Australian Ballet and American Ballet Theater.

Leonardo Balada, the Catalan composer who went to New York in 1956 to study composition, has been a powerful creative force for more than three decades. These accessible and stimulating pieces span the composer' career.

Exploring the byways of Chopin' work reveals gems such as the elegant Rondeau for two pianos, and the Variations for flute and piano on a theme by Rossini then at the height of his popularity.

Joaquin Turina made an outstanding contribution to Spanish piano repertoire, along with Falla, Alb'niz, Granados and Mompou.