Sinfonia Varsovia is a leading Polish symphony orchestra and an ambassador of Polish culture around the world.

Vienna around 1900 was a melting-pot in several ways: a city attracting artists from the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire where bohemian writers and musicians rubbed shoulders with aristocrats and establishment figures, and where late-Romanticism co-existed uneasily with the Wiener Moderne aesthetic of the fin-de-siècle. In the visual arts, Jugendstil (or Wiener Secession) was all the rage: its curlicues, floral patterns and fluid lines were seen everywhere – in architecture, interior design and graphic arts.

Under its music director Pascal Rophé, l’Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire (ONPL) here performs two great orchestral spectaculars of French music – scintillating and imaginative scores composed only 15 years apart. A perennial favorite, Paul Dukas’ symphonic poem The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1897) became a ‘hit’ with the general public after being included in the soundtrack of the Disney animation film Fantasia in 1940.

Essential: a masterpiece of Progressive Rock music
“Freaks” is a song by British neo-progressive rock band Marillion. First released in 1985 on the B-side to the number five UK hit single “Lavender”, in November 1988 it was released in a live version on a double A-side single together with the band’s 1985 number two hit, “Kayleigh”.

Essential: a masterpiece of Progressive Rock music
“Lavender” is a song by the British neo-progressive rock band Marillion. It was released as the second single from their 1985 UK number one concept album Misplaced Childhood.

Essential: a masterpiece of Progressive Rock music
I cannot wait anymore to review this record: This record contains maybe the best guitar solos in the history of music. It is not a question of speed here; it is rather a question of sounding near the perfection.

This album of plaintive beauty, eerie wyrd arcadian horror and childlike outsider music epitomises Clark's constant ability to flip-the-script and coherently organise an abundance of new ideas.

Over the past decade, the visionary musician Arthur Russell has entered something close to the mainstream.