Moonlight Benjamin

Meredith Davies's great quality is his inspired pacing of a score that can easily stagnate. Davies sets the love-duets in dramatic contrast to the vigorous writing…Elizabeth Harwood and Robert Tear are both excellent as Vreli and Sali, winningly characterful and clearly focused…[Shirley-Quirk] is firm and forthright with an apt hint of the sinister.

The follow-up album to the highly successful Appalachia Waltz collaboration, Appalachian Journey continues the combination of classical music with Appalachian, bluegrass, and American roots music in general. Yo-Yo Ma, alongside violinist Mark O'Connor and bass player Edgar Meyer, runs through a number of original compositions fusing the traditions, as well as a few old standards from the genre repertoire.

Evidently these are alternate versions of early tracks from Toad's career, a few of which appeared on their debut album. Since I dearly, dearly love that debut, I was interested to hear these takes. Uniformly good stuff, it only continues to reveal how great this band was and how criminal their obscurity is. Fans of their first two albums will find lots to dig here, and even the less righteous tracks are still good. Could have done without the "Feelin' Alright" cover, but you can't have everything.

This disc presents a survey of music by Finnish composer Toivo Kuula, a pupil of Sibelius. Best-known for his songs and choral music, Kuula s arresting orchestral music draws heavily on folk influences and constitutes some of the most striking Finnish music of its time. Renowned soprano Susan Gritton and the BBC Concert Orchestra under the inspired baton of Martyn Brabbins give spellbinding accounts of this gloriously colorful repertoire.