Igor Markevitch’s extraordinary precocity as a composer is startlingly revealed in this seventh volume of his complete orchestral music. The energy, invention and sheer expressive elan of his Piano Concerto, written at the tender age of sixteen, mark it as a work of amazing maturity. Cantate sets a text by Jean Cocteau to music originally commissioned by the Ballets Russes. Icare is likewise the reworking of another abandoned Ballets Russes project, L’envol d’Icare, which can be heard on Naxos 8.572153 (Volume 3).

"“Until the British conductor Christopher Lyndon-Gee began to record Markevitch's music for Marco Polo in 1995, most of us knew this music only by hearsay. So it was thrilling to discover that it really is as good as all those amazed early commentators suggested.”
Sunday Express