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J. S. BACH. Cantata Sinfonias: No. 12, Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen; No. 21, Ich hatte viel Bektirnmernis. Heinz Holliger (oboe), English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Raymond Leppard. Philips 6500 830 (f3-10).

Any addition to the meagre representation of Samuel Barber in the current catalogue is to be welcomed. Barber speaks with neo-romantic accents and his musical language, though distinctive, uses a familiar syntax and vocabulary. Yet his music has a greater freshness than has much other music of...

Each of these works has rival recordings in the current catalogue (though the Three Oranges Suite is not otherwise available in its complete, six-movement form), but the inclusion of all three on a single record is at present unique; it makes a valuable coupling in both the musical and the...

David Bedford, an English composer of solid talent and admirable range, now seems to spread his invention more and more thinly. Here he sets Coleridge's poem to music, faintly atmospheric, during annunciations of the poet's superscriptions, more vaguely than ever. My bite-noire, the organ, booms...

BEETHOVEN. Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92. Marlboro Festival Orchestra conducted by Pablo Casals. CBS Classics 61871 (£1 -99). Recorded at a concert in Marlboro, Vermont in August 1969.