The three works on this album were all composed between 1943 and 1953. Despite the extreme experiences and difficulties she faced during this undoubtedly most tragic time in Poland’s history, Grażyna Bacewicz managed to compose outstanding works which constitute splendid testimony to the vibrant creative potency for which she was renowned.

Sakari Oramo is among the best known and most heavily recorded Finnish conductors on the international scene. In 2003, he was elevated to principal conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (FRSO), where he remained until 2012. This release for Japanese Exton label includes Johannes Brahms' second & Ludwig van Beethoven's fifth symphonies.

Over the course of almost 10 years, Yevgeny Sudbin has been recording Sergei Rachmaninov's works for piano and orchestra. Reviewers remarked on the soloists transcendental virtuosity and kaleidoscopic keyboard colour (BBC Music Magazine) and enjoyed piano-playing with depth of tone, subtlety and richness of texture, and scintillating dynamism allied to acute lyrical sensibility (Gramophone). The grand finale of Sudbin's Rachmaninov cycle combines the two best-loved concertos No. 2 in C minor and No. 3 in D minor but it also constitutes a home-coming of a kind, as it was recorded in London, Yevgeny Sudbins base since 1997. For his partners in these monumental and almost iconic concertos, Sudbin has chosen the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Sakari Oramo.

Award-winning violinist Akiko Suwanai is backed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo for this recording of compositional works by Sibelius and Walton. In 1990, Suwanai was the youngest winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition following a second place award in the Queen Elizabeth Music Competition in 1989. The performances display warm virtuosity, captured with brilliant sound quality.

Countess Mária Theodora (Dora) Paulina Pejačević was born in September 1885 in Budapest. Young Dora grew up with all the advantages of an aristocrat: a fairy-tale life of opulent palaces set in idyllic landscapes; privilege, comfort, leisure, and wealth. From an early age she defied convention and walked her own path, one that eventually led her to ‘despise’ the aristocracy.

Miniatures and large forms.The work of a young musician of 25, the celebrated Concerto of Grieg combines the great Romantic tradition (Liszt was one of its most fervent admirers) and Norwegian folk music, with the halling and springdans of its thrilling finale. Yet the composer never wrote another, for he felt more comfortable writing in miniature forms. In 35 years he produced no fewer than 66 Lyric Pieces, every one a gem, from the truculent March of the Trolls to the poetic meditations of Homesickness and Remembrances.

Maurice Ravel composed a number of works which have become classics of the repertoire both for solo piano and for orchestra. On the present disc, all except one work were first conceived for piano, which raises the question how it is possible to transfer such pianistic music to the orchestra without making it sound like a mere ‘colourized’ version. Ravel’s orchestral writing was the result of a long apprenticeship and careful study of orchestration treatises as well as scores, notably of works by Rimsky-Korsakov and Richard Strauss.

‘Why has this intense, brilliantly orchestrated, claustrophobically gripping masterpiece been so neglected since its 1977 premiere?’ asked Richard Morrison in The Times of the concert performance in the Barbican that preceded this recording.