These WORLD PREMIERE RECORDINGS will appeal to all lovers of orchestral tone poems in the Romantic and modernist traditions. Avshalomov’s delightful miniatures shimmer with colors akin to Rimsky-Korsakov and Far Eastern music. Silver’s penetrating soul portrait of the biblical matriarch Sarah is richly set for a full string orchestra. Meyerowitz’s colossal Symphony Midrash Esther—premiered by the New York Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulus, but recorded here for the first time—presents one of the most dramatic Jewish legends: how Queen Esther of Persia saved the Jewish People from a genocidal attack planned by the wicked courtier Haman. The finale, Purim, celebrates Esther’s triumph.