Martinu’s mature orchestral works are now a mainstay of the repertoire. But the generous quantity of orchestral music he wrote between his late teens and early thirties is as good as unknown; some of it, indeed, has never even been performed. That’s the case with the ballet Stín (‘The Shadow’) from 1916, which has its world premiere in this recording – astonishingly, in view of the quality of the music it contains. Although the action of the ballet is dark – a girl dances with her shadow in the presence of Death – Martinů’s score presents a series of remarkably buoyant and cheery dances.

Classical pianist Son Yeol-eum has returned to the limelight with her first album in eight years, “Modern Times.” It features a wide range of music from jazzy razzmatazz swing tunes to sounds that remind listeners of a dark and desolate night.

The inspirations are very differing: music from outside Europe, an anthology of poems and a painting inspired the composers André Jolivet, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy to some of their most important works.

During his journey to circumnavigate the globe Sir Francis Drake took four viol players with him, who played both for his devotions and to the native peoples around the world that they encountered.

The Faust Symphony undoubtedly constitutes one of the principal works of Liszt’s Weimar period, if not indeed his orchestral masterpiece. Liszt had become acquainted with Goethe’s poem Faust in 1830, in the French translation of Gérard de Nerval. He began composing the work in the 1840s, after a visit to the Goethe House in Weimar. Its first performance was arranged for September 1857, to mark the centenary of Grand Duke Carl August and the erection of a statue to Goethe and Schiller.