Job: A Masque for Dancing is a one-act ballet produced in 1931. The scenario is by Geoffrey Keynes, the choreography by Ninette de Valois, and the music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The ballet is based on the Book of Job from the Hebrew Bible and was...

On 19 December 1941, Martinů wrote a letter to Serge Koussevitzky, expressing a wish to compose a symphony for the Boston Symphony Orchestra for their next season. In reply, early in 1942 Koussevitzky commissioned a work for large orchestra in memory of...

REPRINT SERIES The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps) is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography...

REPRINT SERIES The Fifth Symphony was composed from March to May 1946. Although Martinů initially spoke of dedicating it to the Red Cross, in the end the score was dedicated to the Czech Philharmonic, perhaps in anticipation of a return to his native...

REPRINT SERIES Two short poems by the Russian symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont are set here. In both songs can be heard the combination of ‘diatonic’ and ‘octatonic’ procedures typical of Stravinsky at this time, which he...

Hugo Alfvén regarded his Symphony No 1 (1896) as the first ‘written in the Swedish language’. It gets a little tied up in the closing pages of its otherwise clearly argued opening Allegro; the Andante is at its best when it breaks...

REPRINT SERIES Perséphone (Persephone) is a musical work (mélodrame) for female narrator, tenor solo, mixed chorus, children's chorus, dancers and orchestra with music by Igor Stravinsky and a libretto by André Gide.It was first...

The Symphony No. 6 ("Fantaisies symphoniques"), H. 343, by Bohuslav Martinů was begun in New York City in 1951, after a hiatus of four years since its predecessor, and was tentatively completed three years later on 23 April 1953. In Paris, in the months...

REPRINT SERIES Martinů composed his Third Symphony during a summer retreat in Ridgefield, Connecticut from 2 May to 14 June 1944. The composition was not the result of a commission, but rather was a spontaneous gesture, and is dedicated to Serge...

Sinfonia antartica ("Antarctic Symphony") is the Italian title given by Ralph Vaughan Williams to his seventh symphony, first performed in 1953. It drew on incidental music the composer had written for the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic. A typical...

REPRINT SERIES Chôros No. 8 was composed in Rio de Janeiro in 1925, and the score is dedicated to the pianist Tomás Terán. It was premiered in Paris on 24 October 1927, at the Salle Gaveau, with the composer conducting the Orchestra...

REPRINT SERIES This Bachiana was dedicated to Villa-Lobos' superior, Minister of Education Gustavo Capanema. It is the one that comes closest to the exuberant contrapuntal density of the Choros series. At over 25 minutes, it is the longest Bachiana, and...

Ralph Vaughan Williams composed his Symphony in E minor, published as Symphony No. 6, in 1944–47, during and immediately after World War II and revised in 1950. Dedicated to Michael Mullinar, it was first performed, in its original version, by Sir...

The Miraculous Mandarin (A csodálatos mandarin / Der wunderbare Mandarin) Op. 19, Sz. 73 (BB 82), is a one act pantomime ballet composed by Béla Bartók between 1918 and 1924, and based on the 1916 story by Melchior Lengyel. Premiered...

 Ralph Vaughan Williams dedicated his Symphony No. 4 in F minor to Arnold Bax.Unlike Vaughan Williams's first three symphonies, it was not given a title, the composer stating that it was to be understood as pure music, without any incidental or...

Prokofiev's Symphony No. 4 is actually two works, both using material created for The Prodigal Son ballet. The first, Op. 47, was completed in 1930 and premiered that November; it lasts about 22 minutes. The second, Op. 112, is too different to be termed...

REPRINT SERIES The Prodigal Son, or Le Fils prodigue (L'enfant prodigue), Op. 46 (Russian: Блудный сын) is a ballet created for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes by George Balanchine to music by Sergei Prokofiev (1928–29). The libretto, based on the...

REPRINT SERIES Chôros No. 6 is an orchestral work written between 1925 and 1942 by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. It is part of a series of fourteen numbered compositions collectively titled Chôros, ranging from solos for guitar...