John Pickard is best known for his powerful orchestral and instrumental works, and his music has been widely praised for its large-scale sense of architecture and bold handling of an extended tonal idiom.

Gordon Jacob’s Piano Concerto no.2 in E flat was completed in 1957 and premiered on 11 July of that year at the Winter Gardens, Bournemouth by the soloist Edith Vogel. A Proms performance took place at the Royal Albert Hall on 9 August 1957 with the same soloist. A review in The Times of the 1957 Proms performance of Gordon Jacob’s Piano Concerto No.2 declared that ‘the composer’s masterly understanding of the orchestra enables him to express each idea economically and in the most clean and attractive colours’, while The Sunday Times’ critic wrote that, ‘having taught the craft of orchestration to a whole generation of composers, Dr. Jacob is himself a past master at clear and effective scoring’.

Smaller concertos for piano and modest orchestral forces were a feature of British composition in the first half of the 20th century. Often they were written for a special occasion, and typically vanished into oblivion thereafter. During the COVID period we were looking for things to record with small numbers of players, and stumbled across this treasury: short concertos written for entertainment that don't outstay their welcome.

"In conversations about Franz Schmidt the recurring theme emerging for many is that listening to a performance of his music at a young age became the turning point in their lives –the realization of how powerful music can be," says Jonathan Berman, whose longtime love of Franz Schmidt's work has its origins in a performance preparation for his Fourth Symphony.

In the latter years of the nineteenth century, England was at its apogee as an imperial power and, as every Englishmen at the time knew, the foundation of that power was the royal navy. In those days, a land army was a fine thing for European wars, but you couldn't beat a navy for projecting imperial power – and nobody could beat the royal navy. An Irish Protestant of English lineage, composer Charles Villiers Stanford deeply appreciated the royal navy – who else could bring an English army across the Irish Sea to put down the an Catholic rebellions? – and his three most popular choral-orchestral works amply prove the sincerity of his appreciation.

This disc not only completes Richard Hickox’s Elgar cycle but also provides a fourth recording of the Third Symphony in Anthony Payne’s ‘elaboration’. Indeed, it collates all three of Payne’s Elgar realisations – including recorded debuts of the 1932 memorial ode for Queen Alexandria and the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6…in terms of recording, then new disc (with a succinct and informative note by Anthony Burton) is a clear winner, the SACD sound having a depth and spaciousness that does justice to Payne’s Elgarian sound-world.

Orchestral works by Daryl Runswick performed by the mighty BBC National Orchestra of Wales with an opening track performed by the internationally renowned vocal ensemble, The King's Singers.

Accordion sensation Ksenija Sidorova in a showcase demonstrating the full range and emotional power of her instrument. 'As an accordionist you sort of have to carve your own path, so I consider it my mission in this way to introduce the instrument to a wider audience', she says. The CD contains old and new repertoire, transcriptions and original works. Fairy Tales concerto by Vaclav Trojan, recorded with BBC National Orchestra of Wales, is written in an enchanting and approachable style with beautiful, heartfelt melodies. Arrangements and transcriptions of virtuosic showpieces include Moszowski’s Caprice Espagnol, the scherzo from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (a transcription that has its roots in Rachmaninov’s arrangement) and Grieg’s Holberg Suite. Contemporary composition Who’s the Puppet? was written for Ksenija by Russian composer Artem Vassiliev. Petr Londonov’s Scherzo-­Toccata is a popular piece with accordionists but little-­known to wider concert audiences.

Portuguese virtuoso Artur Pizarro makes a welcome return to the Romantic Piano Concerto series with the outpourings of two brilliant pianist-composers. Their names may not be familiar to listeners today. The Brazilian Henrique Oswald and the Portuguese Alfredo Napoleão were born in the same year, less than three months apart, when Schumann, Brahms and Liszt were alive and Chopin recently deceased. Both were of mixed European heritage: Oswald with a Swiss-German father and Italian mother, Napoleão with an Italian father and Portuguese mother. Both were child prodigies who became widely travelled concert pianists, pedagogues and composers. In 1868 Oswald gave his ‘farewell recital’ and left Rio de Janeiro to study in Europe; Napoleão went to Brazil.

Charles-Marie Widor was born in Lyon to a family of organ builders and consequently became an organist of great skill and an assistant to Camille Saint-Saëns at La Madeleine in Paris at the age of twenty-four.

This disc shows Rubbra (1901-86) becoming more mature on one hand (Symphony No. 2 of 1937), and on the other, returning to more experiments in tonality than most other composers of his generation (Symphony No. 6 of 1954). The disc starts off with Symphony No. 6, which is much more user-friendly. It's more tonal, more engaging in lyrical ideas; yet these ideas do not draw from folk-music sources. It only alludes to them obliquely, then moves on. Symphony No. 2 avoids folk-music sources altogether and is more of an experiment in polyphonic patterns. It's quite an intense work; it's also quite brilliant.

For some years the Third Symphony was a repertory piece, at least on BBC programmes, but it fell out of favour in the late 1950s. Commentators have noticed a certain Sibelian cut to its opening idea (with woodwind in thirds) but everything else strikes you as completely personal.

Thomas Søndergård's hybrid SACD of Jean Sibelius' Symphony No. 2 in D major and his Symphony No. 7 in C major is an audiophile showcase that presents two contrasting sides of the composer with optimal clarity. The comparatively lush orchestration of the Symphony No. 2 probably has never sounded better in any recorded format, and the multichannel reproduction of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales brings out its vibrant bass, velvety strings, and sumptuous winds in a resonant acoustic, all of which are essential ingredients in the young Sibelius' post-Romantic sound. Yet the Symphony No. 7 presents the sparer counterpoint and leaner textures of Sibelius' mature phase, so the recording brings out the transparency of the timbres, and the clean separation of parts gives an added spatial dimension. Søndergård's interpretations of both works are wholly sympathetic and masterful, and the orchestra plays with the commitment and vitality that make these symphonies compelling. One hopes this is the first installment of a Sibelius cycle, which would be a great addition to Linn's catalog. Highly recommended.