Perhaps one of Finzi's finest compositions, this pacifist masterpiece is all too rarely performed. The beautiful music, scored for tenor and small orchestra, was composed over a span of about 20 years from the 1920s to 1944, as memories and realities...

REPRINT SERIES Litanies à la Vierge noire (French pronunciation: ​[litani a la vjɛʁʒ nwɑʁ]; "Litany to the Black Virgin"), FP 82, is a piece of sacred music composed by Francis Poulenc in 1936 for a three-part choir of women (or children) and...

REPRINT SERIES Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No. 2 in D minor, Op. 40, in Paris in 1924-25, during what he called "nine months of frenzied toil". He characterized this symphony as a work of "iron and steel". Prokofiev modeled the symphony's structure on...

REPRINT SERIES The Viola Concerto in A minor, Sz. 120, BB 128 (also known as Concerto for Viola and Orchestra) was one of the last pieces written by Béla Bartók. He began composing his viola concerto while living in Saranac Lake, New York,...

REPRINT SERIES The Scherzo à la russe was first conceived as a work for film use, as it was intended to be featured in The North Star. When the film project was aborted,he arranged this symphonic version in 1945. The defining characteristics of...

Highly passionate in character and rich in its melodic invention, Finzi’s writing here is characteristically open-hearted and approachable. From the stillness of the opening, the music unfolds, reaching a peak of intensity before returning to its...

REPRINT SERIES Igor Stravinsky's Violin Concerto in D is a neoclassical violin concerto in four movements, composed in the summer of 1931 and premiered on October 23, 1931. It lasts approximately twenty minutes.  It was used by George Balanchine as...

REPRINT SERIES Apollo (originally Apollon musagète and variously known as Apollo musagetes, Apolo Musageta, and Apollo, Leader of the Muses) is a neoclassical ballet in two tableaux composed between 1927 and 1928 by Igor Stravinsky. It was...

Cassazione, Op. 6, is an orchestral composition by Jean Sibelius, composed in 1904 for the programme that introduced his Violin Concerto. Its title refers to the cassation, a genre similar to the serenade, which was popular in the late 18th century...

REPRINT SERIES First published as Op. 19, No. 2 (one of a set of four piano pieces), it was used as incidental music for a play in 1922, and eventually arranged by the composer for organ and orchestra. Cortège consists simply of an opening...

REPRINT SERIES  As admirers of Kodály are aware, the composer was well known for his work in ethnomusicology. The Peacock Variations falls into this vast realm of the composer's output, using a melody that has Hungarian and possibly Mari...

Finzi, who constantly revised his own work, could not bring himself to rest contentedly with the outer movements of his Violin Concerto. However, the central section became established during the composer’s lifetime as a piece in its own right. It...

REPRINT SERIES Ballade for Alto Saxophone and Piano was composed in 1938 by the French composer Henri Tomasi (1901-1971). Introduced by a poem by Suzanne Mallard, his wife, Ballade is a 15-minute work that covers and alternates between different styles...

REPRINT SERIES Finzi's Prelude for String Orchestra Op.25, was originally conceived in the 1920s as the opening movement of a (subsequently uncompleted) chamber symphony, to be entitled The Bud, the Blossom and the Berry, the Prelude nevertheless stands...

The last phase of Finzi’s output following the 2nd World War saw a series of larger scale works culminating in the completion of the Cello Concerto, the work which dominated his final year and was first broadcast on the night before his death in...

REPRINT SERIES   After he departed the Soviet Union in 1918, Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953) spent a fair amount of time in the U.S. concertizing. On one such tour in 1930, the Library of Congress commissioned him to compose a string quartet; the...

REPRINT SERIES This concerto came about because of Szymanowski’s long-standing partnership with the legendary violinist Paweł Kochański, who’d previously collaborated with him on his D Minor Violin Sonata and then on his first Violin...

The Interlude for oboe and strings was composed during the mid 1930s, originally for string quartet; later Finzi created an expanded instrumentation for string orchestra as an alternative. It is a 13-minute work of considerable substance,...