The prolific and internationally admired Jia Daqun is one of China’s leading composers. He has written in a wide variety of forms, but is especially distinctive when writing for orchestra. The Wave of the Surging Thoughts is a large-scale symphonic concerto-suite in which he achieves a high degree of unity through the use of formal variations. Bashu Capriccio is an ardent symphonic prelude that expresses the cultural traditions and simple folk customs of Bashu, the ancient name of Sichuan province.

According to pianist Nathanaël Gouin, there is in caprice a form of liberty devoid of heaviness. The fact that so many composers have taken an interest in this genre indicates a genuine liking for this liberty. Each one of them makes a mark on its identity in a profoundly different way, from Bach to Ohana. Using this idea, he was able to compose a programme of German, Russian and French music, whilst choosing works which embrace the spirit of the caprice and, more importantly, resembling him.

This second volume of the orchestral music of the Austro- American composer Richard Stöhr (1874–1967) reveals further marvels: the first of his two suites for string orchestra encases a moving slow movement between a charming prelude and an elegant fugue; and the four imposing spans of the expansive First Symphony offer grandeur and heartfelt profundity – as well as irresistibly catchy tunes that will set the foot tapping. Stöhr writes in a musical language somewhere between Bruckner, Mahler and his exact Viennese contemporary Franz Schmidt – but it is a voice increasingly readily recognised as his own.

These two works for string orchestra were composed on either side of the flight of the Viennese composer Richard Stöhr (1874–1967) from occupied Austria to the USA, and from prominence and danger to liberty and obscurity, and they reflect the change in his circumstances: the Concerto in the Old Style is expansive, witty, energetic and endlessly good-natured, whereas the Second Suite is introspective, understated and deeply felt. These first recordings allow the discovery of two major additions to the repertoire for strings; the Second Suite is also one of the last grand statements of late Romanticism.

Liya Petrova burst onto the international scene in 2016 when she took First Prize at the Carl Nielsen Competition in Denmark, chaired by Nikolaj Szeps- Znaider.

The Polish composer Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1925) is best remembered for a handful of virtuoso piano pieces, but he also produced a substantial body of orchestral music, most of it unperformed for a century or more. This third volume presents his very first orchestral work, a strikingly assured Overture in D major, written when he was seventeen, and his last, a sombre, dignified and deeply felt Prelude and Fugue for strings, composed on the death of his mother in 1910.

On Remembering, the Danish cellist Jakob Kullberg continues his collaborations with two of the foremost Nordic composers: Per Nørgård and Kaija Saariaho. Praised internationally for his performances of the modern cello concerto, Kullberg regards the concerto form as the encounter of an individual soloist with the sound world of a composer. With living composers this approach often results in an unusual degree of collaboration, as the works gathered here bear witness to.