Hogwood’s accounts are stylish and well recorded, though not quite so bracing in their effect. Both he and Gardiner have the same soloist in the B minor Suite, Lisa Beznosiuk, today’s leading exponent of the Baroque flute. Hers is an appealingly light and delicate tone, one that gives her an almost ghostlike presence in the tuttis. But she is able to hold her own in the solo passages, despite the difficulty of fingering, and in both accounts her playing is nicely ornamented, not overly affected.

Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa originally wanted to be a pianist. But when he injured his hand during a rugby match, he turned to conducting and composing - with great success. As assistant to Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan, he had the best teachers, appeared on all the world's great stages and conducted the Vienna State Opera and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, among others. This recording with the Orchestre de Paris features Tchaikovsky's Ballet Suites to The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty.

In his ballets the great Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev continues the long and famous tradition of Russian ballet music, which culminated in the immortal ballets of Tchaikovsky (Nutcracker, Swan Lake). Prokofiev’s genius for characterisation produced such classical “hits” as the Montagues & Capulets (often used in films, commercial and even sporting events!), and the Love Scene of Romeo and Juliet. Also the Cinderella-Waltz from the Cinderella Suite became an evergreen. The ballet Stone Flower is the last Soviet ballet Prokofiev wrote, and although it is little known, it contains music of great beauty and power on an equal level as the famous ballets.

If Saint-Saëns has been called the French Mendelssohn, in a curious turnabout, Joseph Rheinberger (1839?1901) might be called the German Saint-Saëns. Both composers were accomplished organists for whom the instrument played a major role in their professional careers. Both composers labored in the field of opera, neither, however?notwithstanding Saint-Saëns?s Samson et Dalila with much success. Both composers found their main calling in instrumental, chamber, and, in Saint-Saëns?s case, orchestral music.