Though Joseph Martin Kraus became the most influential Swedish musician of the 18th century, he was born and educated in Germany, and lived only eight years in Stockholm before his early death at the age of 36. Yet in that brief period he had taught and influenced the next generation of Swedish composers, and created the Swedish school of opera. Haydn described him as “one of the greatest geniuses I have met”, and in his short life he was to write a large amount of music, including operas, ballets, symphonies, cantatas, string quartets, piano sonatas and songs. His deeply moving Symphonie funèbre, composed as a result of the assassination of his friend, the Swedish king, Gustavus III, is regarded as his most outstanding symphonic score. This CD forms part of a complete cycle of Kraus’s Symphonies on Naxos. Volume 1 (Naxos 8.553734) was awarded a prestigious Cannes Classical Award in January 1999 by a jury consisting of the world’s leading classical music journalists.