This important album demonstrates once more the extraordinary range of one of the greatest conductors of the 20th-century, Leopold Stokowski. Dominated by two works from the mainstream repertoire of the last century, by Shostakovich and Vaughan Williams, of whose music Stokowski was a great champion - he made the first recordings of the Shostakovich Symphony and of Vaughan Williams's Sixth Symphony - these two mature performances are coupled with premiere recordings of music by two lesser-known composers, Fikret Amirov's colourful Suite on Azerbaijan Folk Tunes and the Symphonic Epilogue on Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' of which Stokowski gave the world premiere a few years before the gifted composer's tragically early death.