Neeme Järvi conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in the fourth album of their Wagner series. Their performances on the previous three volumes have received high critical acclaim. American Record Guide wrote of Volume 1: This is wonderful playing and sound Järvi knows exactly what to do to make the music speak. The orchestra sounds better than Ive ever heard them. This disc features a symphonic arrangement by the Dutch composer and percussionist Henk de Vlieger of Wagners only comic opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

Our series of works by Richard Wagner, performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Neeme Järvi, continues with a disc of early symphonies, later marches, an overture, and a prelude. Early on in his career, Wagner composed two symphonies, both of which are included on this disc. The Symphony in C, which he wrote when he was just nineteen years old, is heavily influenced by Beethoven in its character, mood, and instrumentation. Written two years later, in 1834, the Symphony in E was left unfinished, Wagner completing only the first movement and thirty bars of the second.

Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, one of his greatest works, was written in the United States after the composer was forced to flee Hungary during World War II. It is not only a brilliant display vehicle for each instrumental section but a work of considerable structural ingenuity that unites classical forms and sonorities with the pungency of folk rhythms and harmonies. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta explores darker moods through a score of marvelously poised symmetry. This release follows Marin Alsop's 'riveting' (Gramophone) Baltimore Symphony recordings of Dvorak's symphonies.

Simultaneously virtuosic and soulful, indefatigably resourceful and a fount of tech savvy, Valentina Lisitsa has become the very model of a modern, major pianist. From her earliest, chess-playing days, she has prepared, performed and, in many discreet ways since, perfected the keyboard repertoire: war horses in Liszt’s solo canon, two Rachmaninov concerto cycles, challenging Ives sonatas with violinist Hilary Hahn, as well as her most recent record for Decca, a perfectly paced chase of The Piano music of living British minimalist Michael Nyman. On this latest album titled Études, Lisitsa performs works by two leading composers of the Romantic era, Chopin and Schumann.

Julia Lezhneva presents 11 World Premiere Recordings in her new album of Carl Heinrich Graun (1704-1759), one of the most important German composers of Italian baroque opera but almost unknown today.