Borodin’s symphonies exude lyricism and panache. The First took five years to complete but is a work of seamless melodic invention owing something to Mendelssohn, whose influence infuses it with delicious lightness. The Second Symphony is a more explicitly Russian work, pulsing with festive and marchlike elements, high-spirited and boldly nationalistic. The Third was left incomplete, and was reconstructed and orchestrated by Glazunov with considerable facility and imagination. Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony have already demonstrated their prowess in music by another of the 'Mighty Five', Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade (8572693), acclaimed as 'world class… nothing short of spectacular' (MusicWeb International).

Franco Ferrara’s gifts were prodigious. Born in Palermo he was a fine pianist, an even better violinist, playing under Toscanini, and later a conductor whose public performances were curtailed by illness, but whose private classes were famous. His compositions have been overlooked. The Fantasia tragica is a ‘symphonic homage’ to Shostakovich, modelled on the third movement (‘Eternal Memory’) of the Russian composer’s 11th Symphony. The youthful Burlesca attests to his high spirited and superbly realised string writing and shares something of a filmic heritage with Notte di tempesta, a late-Romantic score of fulsome accomplishment.

Stamitz was a violinist, violist and composer, a formidable virtuoso who absorbed much from his predecessors in the Mannheim school. His Viola Concerto in D is a brilliantly conceived work, full of technical demands more often encountered in virtuosic nineteenth-century music. Allied to this is a rich sense of colour and intricate scoring, making this one of the outstanding works of its century. Hoffmeister is better known as a publisher but his two concertos are adorned with rich melodic beauty, elegance and tonal breadth. They are performed by soloist Victoria Chiang, acclaimed for her 'wonderfully deep, communicative sound' (Baltimore Sun).

The French composer, child prodigy and virtuoso violinist Emile Sauret is little-known today, but enjoyed a dazzling reputation during his lifetime. His career took him from the royal courts of Europe to the concert halls of America, with music that is playful, lyrical, ethereal and evocative, and this program contains some of his most distinctive and enchanting works. Michi Wiancko’s 'heightened expressive and violinistic gifts' (Gramophone) unite with acclaimed pianist Dina Vainshtein in a duo with a combined multi-award-winning pedigree.

Book Three of Gesualdo’s Madrigals was published in 1595 and marked a strong change in his style. Rejecting leading poets of the time, Gesualdo preferred to set little known or indeed anonymous writers in order to evoke pathos and huge drama. This is now music of uncompromising directness and intensity, calling on the resources of dissonance and contrast, and using texts for their full expressive potential. Both previous issues in this series have received high accolades, the first, for example [8570548], being full of 'expression, style, heartfelt pulse, and imagination' (American Record Guide).

Within this highly varied selection of original compositions and transcriptions we move from Bach’s masterful First Cello Suite transcribed by Irina Kulikova, to Fernando Sor’s Fantaisie, an ingeniously structured work that is vital and energetic yet at times intimate. Francisco Tárrega’s imperishable masterpiece of tremolo conjures up the Alhambra, Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Sonata, written for his friend Segovia, is a witty homage to Boccherini while Baroque and Broadway are the motors for California Suite by José María Gallardo del Rey. Irina Kulikova is one of the world’s most gifted young guitarists, a multiple prize winner and international performer.

Stanford’s chamber music occupies an important position in his oeuvre. The Piano Trio No 1 was dedicated to the great Hans von Bülow and is an impressively large-scaled and lyrical work, exuding both elegance and vigour. The Piano Quartet No 2 was revived by the Gould Trio after long neglect in 2010. It too is an exceptional work, melodically profuse, including folkloric elements and balancing its clement and turbulent aspects with utter assurance. The violin pieces supply appealing qualities of tuneful playfulness. The Gould Trio’s recording of Stanford’s Piano Trio No 3 [8570416] was 'welcomed with open arms' (Gramophone).

Set just before World War I, Sinclair Lewis’s incendiary novel Elmer Gantry tells a story of old-time religion, illicit romance and revenge. Robert Aldridge and Herschel Garfein’s operatic adaptation is a ‘marvelous amalgam of toetapping accessibility’ (Opera News) full of hymns, gospel songs, marches and dance, evoking the period in a score which echoes Gershwin and Copland. This all-American production combines a first-rate cast of singers and a world-class orchestra for ‘an intoxicating experience’ (The New York Times).

Kamran Ince writes music of thrilling intensity. His Piano Concerto is a 'sonic dream' of a work, constructed on the principle of block-like contrasts that embody startling and glittering sound worlds, and Infrared Only is no less stupendous in its impact. The 1994 Symphony No 2 is the first of his works to include Turkish elements and these invest the music with a rich panoply of timbres. Folk elements deepen in the Concerto for Orchestra, Turkish Instruments and Voices, where Ince employs instruments full of potency and power such as the zurna and ney. The result is music of intoxication and intimacy, violence and tenderness.

Hailed by critics as 'following in the footsteps of Respighi', Salvatore Di Vittorio’s 'serious, lyrical and romantic' work appears here in its ideal light: conducted by the composer and performed by the orchestra he founded in 2006, noted for its 'stirring… voluptuous' sound (The New York Times). Italian influences abound. Echoes of Rossini, Scarlatti and the Renaissance heighten this music’s narrative appeal, while the moving Sinfonia No 2 turns more to the Germanic worlds of Brahms and Mahler for its elegiac message.

Awarded the Prix de Rome in 1955, Rene Maillard achieved fame as a young French composer with works such as the virtuosic, Baroque-inspired Concerto Grosso and the Concerto da Camera No. 2, which combines classical and folk elements, before taking up an executive career outside the world of music. Returning to composition in 2000, Maillard has continued to create new works of power and beauty such as Surviving after Hiroshima, based on the dramatic true story of Kyoko Hama.

Havergal Brian was one of the most remarkable of twentieth century symphonists, whose reputation for the gargantuan (Symphony No 1 ‘The Gothic’, Naxos 855741819) has tended to overshadow the more concise nature of his later music. His Symphony No 20 for instance, written in 1962, is compact, thematically sophisticated, and deeply expressive. Both it and No 25 (1966) abandon Brian’s previous practice of one-movement symphonies in favour of the more classical three movements. Symphony No 25 has beautiful melodies channelled within a wholly logical structure and is one of Brian’s most distinguished late works.

With its vibrant lightness of touch and warmth of expression, Rodolfo Halffter’s music is both approachable and stimulating. Volume 3 of this series (volumes 1 and 2 are available on 8572418 and 8572419) brings his complete string quartets, each with its own power and expression, exploratory intellectual curiosity and impish wit. The composer’s only Cello Sonata inhabits a world of neoclassical refinement with hints of Hispanic rhythm and melodic gesture, and Halffter’s Spanish/Mexican idiom is second nature to the Madrid based Breton Quartet.

Howard Blake is well known for his superbly effective film scores, and this programme brings première 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. New discoveries emerge in the sensual and atmospheric ballet Leda and the Swan, and a specially revised String Trio. One of Britain’s foremost and senior ensembles, The Edinburgh Quartet celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with the commission of Blake’s dramatic Spieltrieb.

The saxophone quartet is a versatile and exciting medium and the New Hudson Saxophone Quartet is one of the world leaders in the field. The music ranges widely and embraces the jazz-derived rhythmic drive of Elias Tanenbaum’s Sax Quartet as well as the multi-movement and coloristic expression of David Sampson’s Breathing Lessons. Dexter Morrill pays homage to two great jazz saxophonists as well as to classical models, whilst Eddie Sauter’s almost unknown work for tuba and saxophone quartet is full of imaginative invention. Eric Ewazen provides a brilliant and energetic conclusion. Whether written for or premiered by the group, these are all first recordings.

Organ music holds a special affection for leading UK composer Judith Bingham, and the repertoire in this programme reflects a cross-section of her themes and work both recently composed and newly arranged. Experienced broadcast performer Tom Winpenny is joined by the acclaimed group, The Dmitri Ensemble, for the atmospheric concerto Jacob’s Ladder, while the rebuilt St Albans Cathedral Organ is an ideal instrument for works such as the improvisatory Annunciation I and radiantly charming Hope, recorded, as was all the music on this album, in the composer’s presence.

One of Lithuania’s leading artistic figures, Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis pursued a career as a painter as well as a musician, seeing all art as springing from the same source. His earlier works inhabit a romantic idiom, with the colorful influences of folk-music and the beauty of the countryside intermingled with pieces showing his development while at the Conservatoires of Warsaw and Leipzig. Muza Rubackyte’s recordings of Ciurlionis have been described as ‘flawless’ (American Record Guide) and she herself as ‘one of today’s most important pianists’ (Chicago Tribune).

Award winning pianist Klara Kim is recognized for her 'excellent technique, exuberance and vitality' (New York Concert review). Here she brings the unique synthesis of traditional sources and contemporary compositional techniques of five leading Korean composers. Their works range from descriptive serenity in Younghi Pagh-Paan’s Pa-mun, childhood simplicity from Chung Gil Kim’s Go Poong (‘Memory of Childhood’) and rhythmic and dynamic extremes in Sukhi Kang’s Piano Sketches. Pioneering figurehead Isang Yun is represented by his early expressionist Funf Stucke and the much later improvisatory Interludium.

With their melodic richness, sparkling instrumentation, originality of invention and irresistible momentum, Johann Strauss the Elder’s compositions of 1845-46 are among his most memorable. His waltzes and quadrilles were heard in some of the grandest Viennese ballrooms (one with 6,000 candles) and excited admiration from dancers and critics alike. Robert Schumann said of the Concordia Dances that they were 'real foot-waltzes, to which everything surges and jumps'. Whether writing for benefit concerts for victims of the 'Saxon Flood' – Merry Pictures of Life was received with 'hurricane-like applause' - or basing his themes on Flotow’s opera Alessandro Stradella, Strauss possessed such an inexhaustible and unrivalled mastery of the waltz that each new work was greeted by his adoring public as his best.