In the words of the composer, The Sinfonietta was written on board the S.S. Christoforo Coloumbo en route from New York to Europe. I was going to Europe for a conducting tour which included an appearance with Radio Symphony Orchestra in Zurich,...

REPRINT SERIES The Partita dates from 1955, after Bacewicz had recovered from a serious car accident in the fall of 1954 that led to a lengthy hospital stay. The neoclassical traits apparent in her earlier work gave way to a distinctly “innovatory...

Coastal Command is a 1942 British film made by the Crown Film Unit for the Ministry of Information. The film, distributed by RKO, dramatised the work of RAF Coastal Command.Coastal Command is a documentary-style account of the Short Sunderland and...

While Shostakovich wrote this piece as his graduation exercise from Maximilian Steinberg's composition class, some of the material may have dated from considerably earlier. The immediate parallel to the 19-year-old composer presenting his first symphony...

REPRINT SERIES 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...

REPRINT SERIESVaughan Williams often tended to focus on the composition of works in a specific genre at certain periods in his career. In 1913, for example, he wrote incidental scores to no less than seven plays (five by Shakespeare), and in 1920 he...

It is fair to say that Szymanowski’s First Symphony (1906–07) was something of a reverse in his creative fortunes and is best regarded as a flawed if valiant attempt to write on a larger orchestral scale. The pre-eminent writer on...

Prokofiev extracted an orchestral suite from the On The Dnieper Op. 51, using six of its twelve movements. This Symphonic Suite is sometimes identified as Op.51a or Op.51bis depending on the catalog, but it's the same work. On the Dnieper (На Днепре),...

The soundtrack of the 1927 film Napoléon, directed by Abel Gance, was the first film soundtrack ever composed. Published in 1927, Honegger made a selection of movements from the soundtrack of the silent movie Napoléon, and presented it as a...

Sergei Prokofiev's Symphonic Song (Russian: Симфоническая песнь), Op. 57, was written in 1933. It's a work demonstrating Prokofiev's transition from Parisian modernism to Soviet lyricism. Prokofiev had described of it as "a serious piece of work, and I...

Milhaud’s Service sacré  for baritone (cantor), narrator, mixed chorus and organ or orchestra is one of the few authentic masterpieces of twentieth century liturgical music. Composed in 1947 for San Francisco’s Temple Emanu-El, it...

Le Baiser de la fée (The Fairy's Kiss) is a neoclassical ballet in one act and four scenes composed by Igor Stravinsky in 1928 and revised in 1950 for George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet. Based on Hans Christian Andersen's short story...

Described by Vaughan Williams as a "symphonic impression", it received its premiere under the conductor Thomas Beecham on 22 February 1909. The piece is meant to evoke feelings of traversing East Anglia's often bleak Fen landscape, illustrated by the...

REPRINT SERIES  Les biches is a one-act ballet to music by Francis Poulenc, choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska and premiered by the Ballets Russes on 6 January 1924 at the Salle Garnier in Monte Carlo. Nijinska danced the central role of the...

REPRINT SERIES Chôros No. 10 ("Rasga o Coração") is a work for chorus and orchestra written in 1926 by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. It is part of a series of fourteen numbered compositions collectively titled...

REPRINT SERIES The concerto was composed in 1954 in Rio de Janeiro. It was commissioned by Felicja Blumental, to whom the score is dedicated, and who gave the first performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 8 May 1955, with the London...