John Adams Short Ride in a Fast Machine

Between 1980 and 1998 Simon Rattle conducted no less than 934 concerts with the CBSO. Together they performed works by many 20th-century composers, as well as established favourites, and gave a total of 16 world premieres. Rattle also made 69 recordings for EMI with the orchestra. This box brings together that recorded legacy, which includes pieces by composers pivotal to his work, such as Mahler, Sibelius and Szymanowski, as well as some of the new compositions he championed — Nicholas Maw’s Odyssy, Mark Anthony Turnage’s Momentum, Three Screaming Popes and Drowned Out, and Thomas Ades Asyla.

Orkest de Volharding is one of the longest established European new music ensembles, created in 1972 by composers Louis Andriessen and Willem Breuker to perform one work, Andriessen's piece De Volharding. Its sister ensemble, Hoketus, has long fallen by the wayside, but Orkest de Volharding (literally the Perseverance Orchestra) presses on in a prodigious outpouring of concerts and recordings. They remain little known in the United States, despite having recorded works of Andriessen, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Torke for major labels distributed in America.