Rimsky-Korsakov is probably best-known for Scheherazade, a glittering spectacle of orchestral colour and drama. The Suite from Le Coq d’Or (the Golden Cockerel) also shows why Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical influence went beyond his own lifetime and the romantic era, into impressionism and modernism.

Tchaikovsky’s only Violin Concerto is now such a greatly loved piece that it’s hard to believe the difficulties of its first performance. When the original dedicatee, a famous soloist of the time, declared it unplayable, finding another more willing virtuoso was all the more challenging. Once it made the concert stage, the story took a very different turn, and as if to make up for the initial problems, scarcely a week goes by without a performance somewhere in the world.

Sergey Taneyev was one of Tchaikovsky’s greatest students, and his successor the Moscow Conservatory, and his Fourth Symphony is his great orchestral masterpiece. From its arresting opening bars flows an energetic, voluptuous piece that wrings everything from its huge orchestra, climbing summit after summit, and arriving magnificently at a gleaming brass-drenched finale – a largely unknown, but utterly irresistible work.

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