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Luís de Freitas Branco was a pre-eminent figure in Portuguese music of the first half of the twentieth century. This first disc of a four-volume series of Freitas Branco’s orchestral works features the First Symphony, in which the influence of César Franck, Brahms and French musical impressionism is assimilated into his own musical style. The Scherzo Fantastique is a short single movement work, brilliantly orchestrated yet extremely controlled in its use of the orchestral forces. The Suite Alentejana No. 1 is based on the rich musical folklore of the Alentejo, a region of Portugal south of Lisbon where Freitas Branco spent many of his summers.

Luís de Freitas Branco was the towering figure in Portugese music during the first half of the 20th Century.

This second disc of a four-volume series of Freitas Branco’s orchestral works features his Second Symphony which combines elements as disparate as Gregorian chant, the boisterous spirit of a Brucknerian scherzo and the influence of Franck and Debussy into a superbly integrated Romantic work.

His tone poem After a reading of Guerra Junqueiro was inspired by Richard Strauss, whose opulent orchestrations it echoes. Artificial Paradises, an eerie piece inspired by de Quincy’s Confessions of an Opium Eater, is regarded as Freitas Branco’s masterpiece par excellence.

Naxos’s acclaimed survey of Luís de Freitas Branco’s orchestral works continues with his magisterial Third Symphony which, although composed in 1944, revels in Romantic melodrama and luminous orchestral sonorities.

The brooding, agitated atmosphere of his tone poem The Death of Manfred for strings contrasts with the expansive Suite Alentejana No. 2, with its evocations of the rural landscape, folklore and village life of the Alentejo region south-east of Lisbon, where the composer owned a large estate and composed many of his works.

Volumes 1 (8570765) and 2 (8572059) are also available.

This fourth volume in Naxos’s critically acclaimed series of Portuguese composer Luís de Freitas Branco’s orchestral music juxtaposes his magnificent Symphonic Poem in the form of variations on an Oriental Theme, Vathek, with Symphony No. 4. As his final symphony, it is an appealing masterpiece that combines Neo-classical stylishness with late Romantic richness.

Álvaro Cassuto, Portugal’s finest living conductor and an authority on the classical music of his country, is an ideal interpreter of this eminently satisfying yet unaccountably neglected repertoire.

Kenneth Fuchs is one of America’s leading composers and his latest collaboration with award-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra – the first volume of which (8559224) was nominated for two GRAMMY® awards – reveals the breadth of his achievement. Atlantic Riband evokes the struggle and ultimate victory of ocean-crossing immigrants to America in an orchestral showpiece of power and splendor. American Rhapsody is a lyrical romance for violin and orchestra, and Divinum Mysterium a single-movement viola concerto rich in expressive tapestry. Concerto Grosso shows Fuchs’s sheer energy, and Discover the Wild is an orchestral overture of lyricism and color.

After his death in 1927, Robert Fuchs all but vanished from public consciousness. Yet here is a composer who could count Mahler, Wolf and Sibelius among his many talented pupils. This selection of music for string orchestra, written between Fuchs’s late twenties and early fifties, gives us an opportunity to reassess a neglected and influential figure of Austrian Romanticism. Under young German-born conductor Christian Ludwig, the internationally renowned Cologne Chamber Orchestra revives these delightful works with characteristically polished ease.

‘A richly endowed composer, selfless teacher, and a rare human being’ proclaims Robert Fuchs’ memorial stone, and this esteem is reflected in his astonishing roster of pupils – Mahler, Sibelius, Wolf and Korngold among them. His own compositions, though, have been overlooked, unaccountably so on the evidence of these lovely Serenades. The Third is quite Brahmsian with a wonderfully bracing Hungarian finale. No. 4 is a highly expressive and richly scored work, whilst No. 5 casts its net yet wider – with anticipations of Mahler, and joyous references to the Vienna of the Strauss family. Serenades Nos. 1 and 2 are available on Naxos 8572222.