This album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Nicholas Collon joins together two impressive cosmic visions: Gustav Holst ’s iconic orchestral masterpiece The Planets together with a gem from Finnish orchestral literature, Väinö Raitio’s (1891–1945) Moonlight on Jupiter. Raitio’s work from the 1920s is recorded for the first time in 50 years and receives its first CD recording.

With these six symphonies dedicated to Baron van Swieten, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach demonstrated his talent for instrumental and expressive genius. Entirely devoid of sentimentality and gratuitous extravagance, they open the doors to both Viennese Classicism and its immediate successor: Romanticism. It was only natural that, after tackling Haydn and the Esterházy princes, Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti should investigate this repertoire in which, once again, aristocratic patronage lies at the heart of musical creation.

Following the Brandenburg Concertos, Sigiswald Kuijken now presents a new recording of the four Orchestral Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach with his ensemble La Petite Bande. Orchestral suites in the French style, in which the actual overture is always followed by a series of dances or characteristic movements, were quite well known during Bach's time at courts throughout Europe. The splendour of the Versailles court of Louis XIV and XV was imitated everywhere, and music was of great importance in this respect.