PETER MAXWELL DAVIES (b.1934): Trumpet Concerto (Royal Scottish National Orchestra), Piccolo Concerto, 5 Klee Pictures (Philharmonia Orchestra), Maxwell's Reel, with Northern Lights.

Description: The biggest-scale work here is the half-hour long trumpet concerto from 1998 which uses material Maxwell Davies was intending for an opera on St. Francis of Assisi while in 1996 he solved the problem of how you can stand hearing a piccolo concerto by surrounding the instrument with airy, well-balanced textures including much tuned percussion in the midst of which the piccolo sounds like just another instrumental color. The shorter pieces are the 1998 Reel, inspired by a Northern Lights-show the composer witnessed in Orkney while heading for a community event (he uses a genuine strathspey tune at the work's center), and the 1976 re-orchestration of a 1959 lost work written for a grammar-school orchestra which, needless to say, couldn't be played in this version by such kiddies. John Wallace (trumpet), Stewart McIlwham (piccolo), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Peter Maxwell Davies. Original 1991, 1995 and 1998 Collins Classics releases.