Celebrating the work of Benjamin Britten, this album combines three of the composer’s enduringly popular, yet vastly distinctive works. Sir Simon Rattle leads us on an unexpected journey through this diverse collection of masterpieces.
Written shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Sinfonia da Requiem meditates in part on the political populism which had, for the second time in just a few decades, plunged the world in to an existential crisis. In this piece, Britten’s rich, yearning harmonies reveal a sombre and dramatic warning of the cost of conflict.From the darkness of war, we move towards the light with Britten’s choral Spring Symphony. With its mysterious reimagining of traditional English folk song and verse, the work depicts the gradual reawakening of the natural world when winter ebbs away, and spring begins to triumph.Britten let his imagination catch fire in The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. This brilliantly original showpiece is one of the composer’s best-known pieces, and draws the album to a close.

The air shimmers and glows, and somewhere in the mists, a solitary horn gives a lonely call. The stuff of fairytales? The truth is, it’s impossible to write about Bruckner’s majestic Fourth Symphony without letting the imagination soar; he never wrote anything more colourful, or more poetic. In Germany, they call it the ‘Romantic’ symphony, and it’s easy to hear why.
Sir Simon Rattle loves Bruckner’s Fourth, and on this new recording from LSO Live, he conducts the work in all its splendour: music that never gets any less stirring, and has never sounded so fresh.

Distinguished orchestral players with enviable reputations in their own right, the Lso Percussion Ensemble returns with a vibrant, jazz-infused album of music by Gwilym Simcock, Steve Reich, Chick Corea & Makoto Ozone. Quartet Quintet centers around the world premiere of Quintet, a five-movement suite by the British pianist and composer Gwilym Simcock that pulls inspiration from seminal jazz fusion acts Steps Ahead, Yellowjackets and Weather Report, and Steve Reich's 2013 Quartet for two vibes and two pianos. The album also includes new arrangements of classic pieces by jazz legends Chick Corea, Makoto Ozone and Joe Locke.

The second album in Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Schumann series with the London Symphony Orchestra travels from glorious fanfare to dream-like passages with the lively Spring and Rhenish symphonies.