Album: Sascha Goetzel, Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, Music from the Machine Age: Bartók, Holst, Prokofiev, Ravel, Schulhoff (Onyx)

These five pieces ably summarise the ferment of creativity unleashed in the aftermath of the First World War, from Bartók's outrageous ballet suite The Miraculous Mandarin, with its theme of prostitution and murder, and its grotesque dances to Prokofiev's Scythian Suite, a whirling-dervish concatenation of evil gods, monsters, sacrifice and violence.

Most fascinating of all is the Ogelala ballet suite by Erwin Schulhoff, a Czech composer who died in a Nazi concentration camp: it most clearly exhibits the liberating influence of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

DOWNLOAD THIS Ogelala; Scythian Suite; The Miraculous Mandarin