For its very first album on chandos, the national youth orchestra of great britain devotes its characteristic energy and musical mastery to an explosive program that transcends daily life and eathly experience. It is helped by the enthusiastic, encouraging and experienced baton of edward gardner as well as by the sumptuous yet detailed acoustic of symphony hall, birmingham, all fully revealed in this surround-sound recording. Their performance of strauss's also sprach zarathustra and holst's the planets is already a point of reference in the uk after the immensely successful prom concert that preceded the recording.