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...

Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20, was composed in 1939–40 to a commission from the Japanese government for the 2,600th anniversary of the imperial line; the Japanese authorities rejected the finished score because of its use of...

REPRINT SERIES  Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso No. 2 (B.84), composed in 1952 and published by G. Schirmer in 1953, is scored for a concertino string quartet (two violins, viola, cello) against a five-part string ripieno (string orchestra)...

Walter Piston’s The Incredible Flutist is a one-act ballet composed in 1938 with a libretto by Piston and Hans Wiener; it is his only work for the stage and was premiered by the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler on 30 May 1938. The work paints a...

REPRINT SERIES  Die Liebe der Danae, Op. 83, is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Joseph Gregor (after sketches by Hugo von Hofmannsthal). Strauss worked on the score in the late 1930s and completed it on 28 June...

The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34 (subtitle Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell) was written by Benjamin Britten in 1945 for a British Ministry of Education film, Instruments of the Orchestra; the film version (with narration...

REPRINT SERIES  Hammersmith: Prelude and Scherzo, Op. 52, was written by Gustav Holst in 1930 as a substantial two-part work for military/wind band (Prelude and Scherzo). The wind-band premiere took place at the American Bandmasters Association...

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, Op. 66 (composed 1961–62), is a large-scale choral-orchestral work written for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral and intended as a musical act of remembrance and reconciliation. Britten interweaves...

REPRINT SERIES Irving G. Fine’s Diversions for orchestra (1959–60) is an orchestration of four short piano pieces that Fine scored for full orchestra (with optional saxophones). The set comprises Little Toccata, Flamingo Polka, Koko’s...

“The Typewriter” is a novelty orchestral showpiece completed on 9 October 1950; Anderson scored it for full orchestra with a real typewriter used as a solo percussion instrument (three principal sounds: typing, the carriage return bell, and...

REPRINT SERIES  Capriccio is Strauss’s final stage work (composed 1940–41), described by the composer as “a conversation piece for music.” The libretto was prepared with Clemens Krauss (and with input from Strauss) and the...

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103, subtitled The Year 1905, was composed in 1957 and premiered in Moscow on 30 October 1957 by the USSR State Symphony Orchestra under Natan Rakhlin (the Leningrad premiere followed on 3...