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...

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, was composed in 1937 (April–July) as a public response to the cultural condemnation he had suffered that year; it premiered on 21 November 1937 in Leningrad with Yevgeny Mravinsky and...

Benjamin Britten’s Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 68, was composed in 1963 and dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave the premiere with Britten conducting the Moscow Philharmonic on 12 March 1964. The work’s title reflects...

Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony, Op. 4, was written in 1933–34 and is wholly derived from themes he composed as a child; it is scored for string orchestra (also playable as a string quartet) and typically lasts about 16–18 minutes in...

REPRINT SERIES  Manuel de Falla’s “Interlude and Dance”  is the principal purely orchestral episode extracted from the second act of La vida breve. It is presented as a single orchestral scena that moves from a secco,...

Manuel de Falla’s Suite No. 2, Three Dances from El sombrero de tres picos, is an orchestral extraction of the principal dances from Part II of the 1919 ballet. he suite is scored for a medium-to-large orchestra with an emphasis on percussion...

REPRINT SERIES  Manuel de Falla’s Spanish Dance No. 1 (Danza Española No. 1) from the opera La vida breve was arranged for full orchestra by Stéphane Chapelier in 1928. In Chapelier’s orchestration the dance functions as a...

Respighi’s La bella dormente nel bosco is a “musical fairy tale” in three acts, originally composed in 1921 for Vittorio Podrecca’s Teatro dei Piccoli puppet theatre and later substantially revised in 1933 for full theatrical...

Manuel de Falla’s Suite No. 1, Scenes and Dances from El sombrero de tres picos, is an orchestral extraction of the principal dances from Part I of the 1919 ballet. Musically the suite condenses the ballet’s Andalusian...

REPRINT SERIES  Jacob Gade’s Bryllup på Himmelpind (1940) is a rustic orchestral suite evoking childhood memories of village weddings near his birthplace; the work was originally in six movements but was revised and published in a...

Danza ritual del fuego (Ritual Fire Dance) is the best-known movement from Manuel de Falla’s ballet El amor brujo, originally composed as a gitanería (gypsy piece) around 1915 and later presented in orchestral versions associated with the...

REPRINT SERIES  Jacob Gade’s Suite d’Amour is a short orchestral suite in three connected movements—“The First Meeting,” “In Love,” and “Red Roses”—that together run about eleven minutes...

Manuel de Falla’s El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat) is a Ballet in 2 Acts based on Pedro Antonio de Alarcón’s novella and commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes. It was created in collaboration with...

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Flourish for Glorious John (1957) was written as a short ceremonial opener for Sir John Barbirolli to inaugurate the Hallé Orchestra’s centenary season; it is a compact fanfare-like orchestral piece lasting...

REPRINT SERIES  Arthur Honegger’s Prélude, Fugue et Postlude (H.71a) is an orchestral suite in three linked sections—Prélude, Fugue and Postlude—arranged in 1948 from material associated with his earlier Amphion...

Darius Milhaud’s Les Cloches, Op. 259 (“The Bells”), dates from 1946 and is a six‑movement symphonic suite adapted from his lost ballet after Edgar Allan Poe’s poem. The movements—Ouverture: Animé; Cloches...

REPRINT SERIES  Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Prelude and Fugue in C minor, IRV 65, occupies a unique place in his output as one of the few concert works directly modeled on Baroque forms. Originally conceived in 1921 as an organ study and later...