To celebrate his 80th birthday the legendary conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and the promising young violinist Irmina Trynkos, presents for the first time on record works by Nimrod Borenstein, a composer whom Ashkenazy has admired and supported for many years.

The past few years have seen his compositions premiered and performed at prestigious venues including the Royal Opera House and the Royal Festival Hall in London, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Salle Gaveau in Paris, and Carnegie Hall in New York. Written especially for the occasion, If you will it, it is no dream was premiered by Ashkenazy to great acclaim in 2013 at the Royal Festival Hall.

While Borenstein is a supremely melodic composer, he draws attention in his work to his special use of counterpoint, which he says could be described as ‘multimelodic’, suggesting the eternal but ever-changing flow of time, in which events constantly overlap with one another. This technique is characteristic of both If you will it, it is no dream and The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe.