Disaster at Moscow

The music of renowned Chinese composer Xia Guan has been received with acclaim in Moscow, Vienna, Tokyo and New York. The solemn first movement of Earth Requiem, a commemoration of the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, is heard here in an orchestral version that depicts ‘the suffering people who gaze upwards’. The epic Symphony No. 2 ‘Hope’ is a reflection upon the co-existence of good and evil in mankind, agony and hope, in music of considerable breadth and increasing warmth. Heroic drama animates the vividly scored Symphonic Ballade, which draws on the music of Guan’s opera Sorrowful Dawn, the story of China’s War of Liberation following the end of World War Two.

'A beautifully reasoned book about our own unreasonableness' Robin Ince

Much has been written in the West on the history of the Soviet space program but few Westerners have read direct first-hand accounts of the men and women who were behind the many Russian accomplishments in exploring space. The memoirs of Academician Boris Chertok, translated from the original Russian, fills that gap. This official NASA history series document has been converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. In this Volume 2, Chertok takes up the story with the development of the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and ends with the launch of Sputnik and the early Moon, Mars, and Venus probes. His engaging accounts of these dramatic and historic years reveal repeated failures, technical problems, and governmental struggles that marked the opening of the space race in the Soviet Union.