Drubin, give it a few more spins. There are the Keith Johnson's recordings of the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dance No. 1 and the War Dance from Respighi's Queen of Sheba Suite, both are popular audiophile demonstration tracks.
Then there is Ansermet and L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande's reading of the Tchaikovsky Swan Lake excerpt from a 1959 DECCA, a vintage treasure cherished by many, not to mention other quintessential classical tracks, such as the best-sounding Vivaldi Four Season I've heard, a Carmen excerpt and a Pachelbel Canon in D.
Although I am not a huge Jazz fan, I do find track 3, Lift Alone, a most captivating performance of a Chinese erhu in a Jazz backdrop, while the use of erh and guzheng in track 6, Lift Your Veil, displays a rather unusal but strangely expressive use of the Chinese instruments. But listen to track 9, Blue Dream, don't you just find the seemingly highly-improvised sax just amazingly contemplative and yet musically tasteful?
There are also two vocal cuts, as in Heart of Glass, a very melodic piece sung in perfect British English by an incomparably jazzy Korean Nah Youn Sun in Denmark, and Kinderpiele, an equally enchanting piece (if not more so) of a female vocalization accompanied by a single acoustic guitar. This piece, though sung in German, is nevertheless incredibly communicative.
My favorite track, for the time being, is the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto ensemble's Autumn In Seattle for the exceptional sound quality, although my favorite FIM disc is still the Vivaldi Four Seasons. Perhaps because I've never heard Jazz in such clarity and musicality that the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto cut has taken priority over a classical track in my listening.
FIM packs the disc so that fans of different genres can enjoy the disc; but I've found it more conducive to just play tracks of the same genre in listening sessions. While I'm sure some audiophiles enjoy listening to the disc in the order of FIM's arrangement, I found it rather disconcerting; but that's the nature of a sampler disc.
