Music by Gerald Finzi, Rheinold Gliere,  Camille Saint-Saëns, Thomas Schmidt-Kowalski, Fritz Weigl. Hosted by Jim Pellatt.

Gerald Finzi: Cello Concerto in A Minor. Purchase Here
Rheinold Gliere: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor. Purchase Here
Camille Saint-Saëns: Cypres et Lauriers. Purchase Here
Thomas Schmidt-Kowalski: Cello Concerto in A Minor. Purchase Here
Fritz Weigl: Symphony No. 5 'Apocalyptic'. Purchase Here

Rheinold Gliere.

Glière lifted the noble melody of the central section almost without modification from the finale of Rachmaninoff's popular Second Piano Concerto. Later, America's Tin Pan Alley would use the same theme for a pop song called "Full Moon and Empty Arms". A poignant and tender aria, initially sung by the English horn, is the subject of a series of colorful variations in III. It is played by Sir Edward Downes and the BBC Philarmonic Orchestra.

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Second Piano Concerto (1868), the First Cello Concerto (1872), Danse macabre (1874), the opera Samson and Delilah (1877), the Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and The Carnival of the Animals (1886).

Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire. After leaving the post twenty years later, he was a successful freelance pianist and composer, in demand in Europe and the Americas.

 As a young man, Saint-Saëns was enthusiastic for the most modern music of the day, within a conventional classical tradition. He was a scholar of musical history, and remained committed to the structures worked out by earlier French composers. Saint-Saëns held only one teaching post, at the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse in Paris, and remained there for less than five years. The piece we are about to hear is Saint-Saëns, Cypres et lauriers played by  Ian Tracey Organ, BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba -, Op. 156

Thomas Schmidt-Kowalski (21 June 1949 – 5 January 2013)[1] was a German composer.

Schmidt-Kowalski was born at Oldenburg in 1949.[2] He studied composition at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Berlin under Frank Michael Beyer (1971) and at the Musikhochschule Hannover under Alfred Koerppen (1972–77).[2] In the course of his studies, Schmidt-Kowalski turned from the musical avant-garde and chose to write in a more traditional vein.[2] 

 Schmidt-Kowalski's works are fully tonal, and their design and h