Three-movement work composed for the Festival Of Israel, 1972.

Alan Rawsthorne's First Symphony is a thunderous, bounding, jagged affair, relieved by quieter moments of irony.

The scenario of Martinu’s 1930 “Echec du Roi” (Checkmate) anticipates that of Stravinsky’s “Jeu de Cartes” (1937), with dancing chessmen taking the place of dancing poker chips. The score mixes Stravinskyan...

In 1955, Heitor Villa-Lobos was commissioned by John Sebastian to write a harmonica concerto, and the piece was premiered in in Jerusalem on October 27, 1959, a month before Villa's death. Villa-Lobos was one of a number of eminent composers...

The soundtrack of the 1927 film Napoléon, directed by Abel Gance, was the first film soundtrack ever composed. Published in 1927, Honegger made a selection of movements from the soundtrack of the silent movie Napoléon, and presented it as a...

Renard: histoire burlesque chantée et jouée, or The Fox: burlesque tale sung and played, is a chamber opera-ballet for four male voices and 16 instrumentalists written in 1916 by Igor Stravinsky. Its original Russian text, by the composer,...

Milhaud’s Service sacré  for baritone (cantor), narrator, mixed chorus and organ or orchestra is one of the few authentic masterpieces of twentieth century liturgical music. Composed in 1947 for San Francisco’s Temple Emanu-El, it...

Given Ottorino Respighi’s outstanding mastery in handling the modern orchestra and his superb gifts for impressionist tone-painting (the very qualities cited by the many detractors and adversaries of this great composer), it is astonishing how...

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...

The Saudades do Brasil (1920), Op. 67b, are a suite of twelve dances for Orchestra by Darius Milhaud, but originally made for Piano Op.67. Composed after Milhaud's visit to Brazil in 1917-1918, each dance is based on a duple tango or samba rhythm and...

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...