Benjamin Britten’s Nocturne, Op. 60, was composed in August–September 1958 for tenor voice, seven obbligato instruments, and string orchestra. It lasts about 25 minutes, and its first performance was given on 16 October 1958 at Leeds Town...

Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op. 31, was composed in 1943 for tenor, solo horn, and string orchestra and it is one of his most distinctive early wartime works. The work was written for Peter Pears and Dennis Brain, and...

Benjamin Britten’s Scottish Ballad, Op. 26, is a concertante work for two pianos and orchestra composed in 1941. Britten wrote it for the piano-duet team Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertson, and the piece belongs to his wartime output of compact,...

REPRINT SERIES  Reinhold Glière’s Concerto for Horn and Orchestra, Op. 91, is a three-movement concerto in B-flat major for solo horn and orchestra. The concerto was completed in 1951 and written for the Russian horn player Valery...

Frank Martin’s Concerto for seven wind instruments, timpani, percussion and string orchestra, IFM 6, was composed in 1949 at the request of the Bernische Musikgesellschaft.  The work is cast in three movements — Allegro, Adagietto, and...

REPRINT SERIES Richard Strauss’s Arabella, Op. 79, is a lyric comedy in three acts composed between 1930 and 1932 to a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was first performed at the Dresden State Opera on 1 July 1933 under Clemens Krauss...

Frank Martin’s Petite symphonie concertante, was composed in 1944–45, on a commission from Paul Sacher, and became one of Martin’s best-known works. The original version is scored for harp, harpsichord, piano, and two string orchestras,...

REPRINT SERIES Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden, Op. 38, is a melodrama based on Alfred Tennyson’s poem, using Adolf Strodtmann’s German translation. In Strauss’s original form, it is written for narrator and piano and was...

Benjamin Britten’s Prelude and Fugue, Op. 29, was composed in 1943 for 18-part string orchestra, and it was written to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Boyd Neel Orchestra. It lasts about nine minutes and is a compact two-part work built...

Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs (Sieben frühe Lieder) is a cycle for high voice and orchestra that Berg assembled and orchestrated in 1928 from songs he had originally composed between 1905 and 1908, while studying with Arnold Schoenberg. The...

REPRINT SERIES  Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 1 is formally titled A Sea Symphony. It was composed between 1903 and 1909, first performed at the Leeds Festival on 12 October 1910, and is a large-scale choral symphony for soprano, baritone,...

Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes, Op. 33a, is a concert suite extracted from his opera Peter Grimes, first performed in 1945. Britten selected four orchestral interludes from the opera and arranged them as a self-contained work for the...

REPRINT SERIES  Arnold Bax’s In Memoriam (1916), GP 190, is a single-movement elegiac chamber work for cor anglais, harp, violin I, violin II, viola, and cello. It is unrelated to Bax’s orchestral In Memoriam for orchestra, and the...

Sibelius’s Suite for Violin and String Orchestra, JS 185, is a three-movement work composed in 1929 and often published as Op. 117. Its movements are Country Scenery (Allegretto), Serenade: Evening in Spring (Andantino), and In the Summer (Vivace)...

Benjamin Britten composed Soirées musicales, Op. 9, in 1935–36, drawing on melodies by Gioachino Rossini, particularly from Rossini’s vocal collection Soirées musicales of the 1830s. The suite grew out of incidental music...

REPRINT SERIES  Alan Rawsthorne’s Symphonic Studies is a large-scale orchestral work completed in 1938 and first performed at the ISCM Festival in Warsaw in 1939. It was one of the pieces that established his reputation early on, and...

Benjamin Britten’s Spring Symphony, Op. 44, was composed in 1948–49 on commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Britten described it as “a symphony not only dealing with the Spring itself but with the progress of Winter to Spring...

REPRINT SERIES Vaughan Williams’s All hail the power is a 1938 arrangement of the eighteenth-century English hymn tune Miles Lane, traditionally associated with Edward Perronet’s text and the music of William Shrubsole. It is written for...