The musical language of the New York-based Arnold Rosner (1945–2013) clothes the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony in rich Romantic colours. The unusual combination produces a style that is instantly recognisable and immediately appealing. This second Toccata Classics album of his orchestral music opens with the powerful symphonic suite Five Ko-ans for Orchestra, one of his finest compositions. A contrast follows in the form of the high-spirited Unraveling Dances – a rhapsody with more than a nod to Ravel’s Bolero. Rosner’s dramatic, dark, hieratic setting of Kafka’s The Parable of the Law – a kind of symphonic recitative for baritone and orchestra – forms a bleak and intense conclusion to an album which shows something of the stylistic range of this neglected 20th-century master.

The American baritone Christopher Burchett has appeared on the stages of opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, including New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; concert performances include an appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre in London. Opera News has described him as a ‘fearlessly vulnerable’ performer, ‘who gave an unflinchingly, heroically human performance that will linger long in the memory’. Nick Palmer is music director of the Lafayette Symphony in Indiana, North Charleston Pops in South Carolina and the ‘Evening under the Stars’ music festival in Massachusetts; principal pops conductor of the Altoona Symphony in Philadelphia; and distinguished conductor in residence at Kentucky Wesleyan College.