Described by Vaughan Williams as a "symphonic impression", it received its premiere under the conductor Thomas Beecham on 22 February 1909. The piece is meant to evoke feelings of traversing East Anglia's often bleak Fen landscape, illustrated by the...

La voix humaine (English: The Human Voice) is a forty-minute, one-act opera for soprano and orchestra composed by Francis Poulenc in 1958. The work is based on the play of the same name by Jean Cocteau, who, along with French soprano Denise Duval, worked...

In La Pentola Magica (The Magic Pot) Respighi pays tribute to a group of less well known Russian composers, including Grechaninov (Prelude), Arensky (Entry of the Tsar with the Bridgegrooms), Pachulski (Scene of Tsarevich), Anton Rubinstein (Dance of the...

A dazzling percussion concerto that requires advanced technique and musicality, from timpani to xylophone to small percussion instruments. This work is often taken up as a challenge for competitions.

For St. Cecilia (subtitled “Ceremonial Ode”) was commissioned by the St. Cecilia’s Day Festival Committee and premiered in the Royal Albert Hall on 22 November 1947, St. Cecilia’s Day (Cecilian works by Purcell and Handel were...

Composed in 1934, the Cello Concerto No.1 is not only the frist composition for cello by Milhaud, but also the most popular. It was dedicaated to Maurice Maréchal, who premiered it in Paris on June 28th 1935. This concerto was one of Grégor...

Certainly Prokofiev’s own ‘stories’ for children end happily – and there are quite a number, not merely those recorded here. The first was The Ugly Duckling, a setting of an adaptation (by Nina Meshchersky, Prokofiev’s first...

One of Milhaud's most well known pieces is 'Scaramouche'. Original written as a Suite for two pianos but later transcribed by the composer for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra. The original conception for the Scaramouche suite was for piano duo, and Milhaud...

Le Bœuf sur le toit (literally "the ox on the roof"), Op. 58 is a short piece for small orchestra by the composer Darius Milhaud, written in 1919–20. Milhaud conceived the piece as incidental music for any one of the comic silent films of...