This release on the NMC mid-price re-issue label Ancora was previously issued on Unicorn-Kanchana Records.

Oliver Knussen's started composing at the age of 6 and, aged 15, he stepped in to conduct his symphony's première at the Royal Festival Hall, London in 1968, after István Kertész fell ill. After that debut, Daniel Barenboim asked him to conduct the work's first two movements in New York a week later.

This is a substantial sampler of Oliver Knussen's output in the 1970s. The two major works are the luminous Second Symphony, which takes the form of a 17-minute song cycle to texts of Georg Trakl and Sylvia Plath, and Symphony No.3, a symphonic poem about Shakespeare's Ophelia.

'No figure in British contemporary music is more respected than Oliver Knussen' - The Guardian