Bbc Music Guide

Sergei Lyapunov has always been a shadowy figure, his derivative yet distinctive voice drowned by his more celebrated compatriots and even by his contemporaries Taneyev, Liadov and Arensky. Yet hearing the First Symphony in a performance of this calibre you're reminded of the way Lyapunov's melodic appeal is complemented by brilliant craftsmanship.

For some years the Third Symphony was a repertory piece, at least on BBC programmes, but it fell out of favour in the late 1950s. Commentators have noticed a certain Sibelian cut to its opening idea (with woodwind in thirds) but everything else strikes you as completely personal.

This marks the final offering from Opera Rara's laudable restoration of BBC broadcasts from the 1970s and '80s of Verdi's first thoughts on specific operas, and it is quite up to the standard of the series. It differs only in being given without an audience, and was broadcast two years after the recording.

Stainer's Crucifixion unfolds with a seamless ease, never jolting the listener with gratuitous theatricality or the type of rhetorical intensity which the English find mildly embarrassing. The emotional engagement here is about an unintrusive sobriety, affected by a glowing sentimental identification with the Saviour's plight.