”The music of George Enescu continues to be a source of discovery for me. As the Fates would have it, though, his Chamber Symphony for 12 Instruments was already familiar to me from a recent Ondine recording by Hannu Lintu conducting the Tampere Philharmonic, which I reviewed only as recently as 36:2. In that review, I stated that the work was new to me and that I had no other versions against which to compare it. Well, that situation didn’t last long, for here is another performance of the piece, which, on my first hearing of it under Lintu, didn’t make a very favorable impression.

These four concertos – two new, two older – have never been recorded! They range from rock-influenced works like Scott McAllister’s Black Dog (based on the Led Zeppelin tune of the same name) and X (based on the music of Alice In Chains) to Katherine Hoover’s jazz concerto written for virtuoso Eddie Daniels, Leslie Bassett’s Fantasy with its wild clarinet virtuosity, 1950s

The first recording of Kurt Vonnegut’s libretto! Vonnegut’s libretto is loosely based on The Execution of Private Slovik, a nonfiction book by William Bradford Huie published in 1954. The resulting version is a highly controversial yet entertaining fusion of Stravinsky’s music and the edgy, abrupt Vonnegut text. This is an American soldier’s tale that doesn’t have a happy ending. In the Vonnegut libretto there are four spoken roles, that of the General (narrator), Private Slovik, a Red Cross Nurse, and a Military Policemen.