‘The Miraculous Mandarin’ (op. 19, Sz 73) is Bartók’s last work for the stage. The plot revolves around prostitution, brutality, robbery, murder, being an outsider, (unrequited) love and finally, as a catharsis, a kind of love-death. The music is relentlessly sharp for long stretches, garishly dissonant, radical, probably the most modern score Bartók created. The premiere (1926) in Cologne was a scandal and Konrad Adenauer, then Lord Mayor of Cologne, immediately cancelled the performances.

Walter Braunfels’ music died twice: first, when the Nazis declared it “degenerate art”; and again when post-war Germany had little use for the various schools of tonal music. This was the period when arbiters of taste considered any form of romantic music – which meant practically the whole pre-war aesthetic – to be tainted.

Award-winning composer and educator Wenchen Qin enjoys one of the most distinguished and influential positions in China’s contemporary music scene with works that have garnered worldwide acclaim. Qin’s unique musical language is influenced by his multicultural background, integrating Eastern and Western elements to create profound spiritual spaces. All of these works are infused with literature, mythology and a fascination with nature. The Cloud River revitalises the sheng – an ancient Chinese instrument – with new playing techniques to depict clouds as a source of boundless imagination. With the sheng also playing a leading role, Poetry of the Land ruminates on how the land provides great inspiration.

Margaret Brouwer is a composer renowned for her music’s lyricism, imagery and emotional power. The five premiere recordings on this album span 24 years. Brouwer grew up in a Dutch/American community and her Symphony no.1 ‘Lake Voices’ encodes both a recurring Dutch hymn-like melody and the rhapsodic, sparkling sonorities of a lake vista. Rhapsody, Concerto for Orchestra provides dazzling sounds and virtuosic challenges, while Pluto, written during a period of loss, offers destructive but also restorative moments. Elsewhere, Brouwer evokes the beauties of nature and sailing at dawn.

Anton Bruckner began the revision of his Third Symphony after completing the Fifth on 16 May 1876 and continued working on it sporadically until 28 April 1877. Then, after the Vienna Philharmonic rejected the Symphony for a third time, Bruckner’s friend, Hofkapellmeister Johann Herbeck, took matters into his own hands. He arranged to conduct the work himself on the concert series of the Society for the Friends of Music [Gesellschaftskonzerte] on 16 December 1877. After Herbeck passed away unexpectedly, Bruckner was forced to conduct the symphony himself. The performance proved to be one of the worst debacles of his career. The players were rude and unreceptive, and the audience left the concert hall in droves.

John Adams’ music has long since captured the admiration of listeners for its inimitable American qualities. City Noir was inspired by the cultural and social history of Los Angeles, with Adams calling it ‘an imaginary film score’ in its evocation of a terse, melodramatic and menace-drenched sound world. Fearful Symmetries exemplifies Adams’ steamroller motor rhythms, endlessly inventive in their shifts of timbre, texture and color. The album ends with a work dedicated to Marin Alsop, a capricious “Spider Dance” of memorable rhythmic drive.

The story of the discovery and resurrection of Britten’s Double Concerto for Violin and Viola is one of those rare musicological moments that can capture the interest of even the casual music lover. Britten had started composing it as a very young man but never quite finished it, even though the work had progressed quite far. So, it was only after his death that the premiere took place, in 1997. Unlike that work, the Violin Concerto, Op. 15 found itself immediately thrust onto the world’s musical stage, its genesis having been rather straightforward, if hardly smooth. Britten had left Great Britain before the outbreak of World War II in Europe and so he composed it in Canada and the US.

The most comprehensive Bruckner Symphonies cycle, including all available versions. Capriccio’s Complete Bruckner Symphonies Edition includes all versions of the symphonies either published or to be published under the auspices of the Austrian National Library and the International Bruckner Society in the Neue Anton Bruckner Gesamtausgabe (The New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition). Bruckner’s Second Symphony is rarely heard in its 1877 version, and it has remained virtually unperformed in the 1872 original version.

Despite all the differences in the musical language of the works by the Polish composers Karol Szymanowski and Krzysztof Penderecki included on this recording, they are united by their quality as a lament: Szymanowski's Stabat mater, completed in 1926 and based on a Polish translation rather than the original Latin text of the medieval poem, is still considered one of the most important contributions to 20th-century music.

Alexander Zemlinsky composed his Lyric Symphony, Op. 18 for soprano, baritone and orchestra during his time as musical director of the New German Theatre in Prague, where he had moved in 1911 from Vienna. It was generally regarded as his corresponding equivalent to Mahler’s Lied von der Erde and is based on Nobel Prize laureate and most important representative of modern Indian literature Rabindranath Tagore.

In Voyages, prolific American composer James Lee III takes the listener on a colourful journey through his endlessly creative orchestral music with ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop.

These two masterpieces are shadowed by the events of the First World War. Elgar’s Cello Concerto, an intensely poignant, reflective and individual musical statement, has enjoyed unflagging popularity among musicians and listeners for over 100 years. By contrast, Frank Bridge’s Oration (Concerto elegiaco) remained unperformed for decades after its early hearings. Yet it shares spiritual affinities with Elgar’s work and serves as a funeral address of huge solemnity and narrative power in its outcry against the futility of war.

Ernst von Dohnanyi was one of the most versatile and influential musicians of his time but his works are now seldom played. A gap which Capriccio want to fill now with this fifth recording of his late romantic, sensual music, deeply rooted in the Austro-German classical tradition.