Master and pupil? A youthful venture on the part of the composer of Scheherazade while naval officer, this symphony of Rimsky-Korsakov deploys fine rhetoric worthy of Haydn’s ‘military’ model incorporating contemporary material. His ‘cadet’ applies himself studiously - Stravinsky’s approach is more casual although the da capo appear in their entirety. A mere ad libitum experiment, his Scherzo fantastique is disappointingly lacking in metronomic rigour but not in inventivity. These two pieces appear together for the first time in over a century and are showcased with consummate skill.

'Appalachian Spring' and 'El Salón Mexicó' are archetypical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast landscapes, cowboys and pioneer spirit. Yet, in the 20th century perhaps only Stravinsky was as adept in as many styles as Aaron Copland [1900-1990]. His Piano Concerto, first performed by Serge Koussevitsky, is a good example of Copland the modernist but he also wrote chamber music, ballets, operas and film scores, as well as teaching, writing and latterly conducting. The winter of 1950 saw Copland take a break from writing his superlative 'Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson' and, inspired by a Pears and Britten recital in late 1949, he took five of his favourite American songs and arranged them for voice with piano. Pears and Britten liked them so much that they gave the premiere together at the Aldburgh Festival in 1950.

This Sony-made 30CD classical music collection covers almost all classical music, from the early Baroque period represented by Bach to the schools of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms represent romantic, national and even modern musical schools led by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, etc. representative, everything wonderful and vivid.

Bruno Walter was one of the last of the European-trained conductors who learned their craft at the feet of the great nineteenth-century composers and their students. Along with giants like Furtwangler, Ormandy and Toscanini, Walter had a depth of understanding that fades with each passing generation. But unlike most of the others Walter had the fortune to have remained active long enough to be able to commit dozens of performances to disc in the modern era of high-fidelity techniques, and with the superb orchestra that CBS once housed.

Bruno Walter was always a most persuasive advocate of the gentler Beethoven–at least, that's what everyone thought until his stereo Beethoven cycle was remastered onto CD, revealing a much stronger musical profile than had been suspected. But that just made the cycle's best performances sound better still–and here they are, together on one midpriced CD! It's amazing that a man in his 80s, as Walter was when these performances were recorded, could take what was essentially a pickup orchestra and turn in performances of such power and authority. Walter and the Columbia Symphony had a genuine chemistry between them–they play these two symphonies as if they had been making music together for years.

Walter, at the end of his career, set out to record his signature pieces for posterity in what was then the new technology of stereo. And unlike von Karajan, who rushed to record his repertoire at the dawn of the video and digital era to often-mixed results, every Walter performance is absolutely brilliant. This recording of Beethoven's 5th and 7th Symphonies, made over 4 days during the week of January 27 - February 3, 1958, is no exception.