One of the foremost musicians of his generation, James Ehnes continues to dazzle audiences around the world. Here he joins the BBC Philharmonic and Sir Andrew Davis in a recording of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto. Written for the Polish virtuoso Samuel Dushkin, the four-movement work takes the music of Bach as its inspiration, and is built around a chord of the notes D, E, and A, which Stravinsky described as his ‘passport to the concerto’ and with which the solo violin part opens each movement.

Every five years the Soviet Union celebrated the anniversary of the October 1917 Revolution with large-scale public events, to which the country’s leading artists were expected to contribute. Mieczyslaw Weinberg, like his friend Shostakovich, enjoyed mixed fortunes with his efforts. The symphonic poem Dawn (Zarya), Op. 60, dedicated to the fortieth anniversary of the Revolution, seems to have remained unperformed during his lifetime, despite its ideologically irreproachable content. Its première was finally given in the BBC studios in Manchester, on 15 May 2019, by the BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds. When Shostakovich died, on 9 August 1975, it had been five years since Weinberg composed his last symphony.

John Wilson’s third volume devoted to music by Eric Coates combines some of the composer’s larger-scale works with miniatures and two marches. The Cinderella Phantasy frames the well-known fairy-tale from Cinderella’s perspective, glossing over the more brutal elements of the original, with some notably descriptive writing for the dream sequences, the ball, and of course the happy ending.

This album of orchestral works marks the centenary in 2012 of the birth of the Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge.

Gianandrea Noseda continues his survey of Italian orchestral music with a disc of works by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, which is the Chandos March Featured Release. Wolf-Ferrari was the son of a German painter and his Italian wife and although acknowledged as an Italian composer, he was perhaps better known in Germany. Wolf-Ferrari achieved his greatest success with a string of operatic works, especially Il segreto di Susanna. The recording includes orchestral excerpts from five operas, together with the Suite-Concertino for bassoon and orchestra.

Our survey of orchestral music by Cyril Scott comes to a close with the premiere recording of the Cello Concerto and Symphony No. 1. The BBC Philharmonic is conducted by Martyn Brabbins, with Paul Watkins as the cello soloist. From an early stage of his musical education Scott was influenced by German artistic ideas and his Symphony No. 1 is dedicated to the poet Stefan George. We have Percy Grainger to thank for preserving the score, in which Scott experiments with a modern rhapsodic style. The Cello Concerto is a later work and shows the influence of Ravel and Debussy. This is a virtuosic and extravagant work full of mysticism and haunting melodies.

Cyril Scott's music inhabits a sound-world that is very much its own, despite the inevitable comparisons to composers such as Scriabin, Sorabji, and even the French impressionists. This new recording of the First Piano Concerto – the first one in over 30 years – takes a fresher, lighter approach that is absolutely thrilling in the outer movements.

Following on from the acclaimed Elgar and Moeran concertos, Tasmin Little and Sir Andrew Davis continue their special affinity for British music with this exciting new recording featuring the music of Coleridge-Taylor, Wood, and Delius.

The cycle of symphonic poems known as Má vlast by Smetana is well known to most music lovers, but how many people know any of his other orchestral music? Well, this disc provides the opportunity to explore the symphonic poems which preceded Má vlast. There are three from his 'Swedish' period: Richard III, Wallenstein's Camp and Hakon Jarl. Written in his native Prague, Prague Carnival and the remaining works on this disc demonstrate a more nationalistic style. Gianandrea Noseda conducts the BBC Philharmonic in an important introduction to Smetana's orchestral output which confirms the composer's status as one of the greatest Czech composers of the nineteenth century.

This is the fourth release by the BBC Philharmonic under its Chief Conductor, Juanjo Mena, and the discography is going from strength to strength – their recording of orchestral works by Falla was ‘Recording on the Month’ in BBC Music. They are joined on this recording by the bassoonist Karen Geoghegan.

On Remembering, the Danish cellist Jakob Kullberg continues his collaborations with two of the foremost Nordic composers: Per Nørgård and Kaija Saariaho. Praised internationally for his performances of the modern cello concerto, Kullberg regards the concerto form as the encounter of an individual soloist with the sound world of a composer. With living composers this approach often results in an unusual degree of collaboration, as the works gathered here bear witness to.

Considered by some to be the ‘Cinderella’ of his symphonies, the Sixth Symphony of Anton Bruckner was composed in 1879 – 81. It may well demonstrate a reaction to the severe criticism of the first Viennese performance, in 1877, of his Third Symphony, which Eduard Hanslick described as a vision of how Beethoven’s Ninth befriends Wagner’s Walküre and ends up being trampled under her horses’ hoofs’.