Here is the voice of nature set to music by some of the world’s finest composers. The sky, the wind, the earth, the forest and the seasons, are vividly depicted, colorfully and melodically, through these performances by the Symphonic ‘Pops’ Orchestra, directed by Nathaniel Shilkret. It is music with a sense of freedom – the freedom to roam and wander unhampered through a land that has no boundaries, only the vastness of nature’s own realm – the ’Open Spaces.’ The hubbub of approaching spring in the cyclic course of seasons opens the album in a descriptive tone poem, Rustle Of Spring by the gifted Norwegian composer, Christian Sinding. Then, nature’s finest mantle – A Beautiful Day is melodically captured with infinite grace and shifting rhythms by Nathaniel Shilkret and Symphonic ’Pops’ in a captivating intermezzo composed by Niel Hallett. Part of the springtime scene is also strikingly depicted in Water Scenes, a series of five piano pieces by Ethelbert Nevin. The fourth of these, the popular Narcissus, is presented here in an inspired interpretation. Side one concludes with Open Spaces, Part I and Part II a concertino for piano and orchestra by Albert Coleman. With piano virtuoso Sherman Frank as the soloist, the rendition captures the feeling of spaciousness, the grandeur of rolling hills and the expanse and quiet of the flat, low-lying plains and prairies. The relative calm of a Western landscape gives way to a hustling bustling autumn mood in a bright novelty that sets hearts dancing in the zephyr breeze. The instruments buffet the charming melody to and fro to create a Sonata For A Windy Day. Then the haunting theme of Reverie by a contemporary composer, Johnny Wynert, exhibits a variety of intriguing instrumental combinations that presents a memorable mood. The pastoral feeling changes to undertones of hidden excitement as light rippling sounds, soft rustlings and whisperings, tall trees swaying in the quickening wind and the snapping of crisp twigs blend into a smooth musical interpretation of Forest Murmurs. The spellbinding beauty of the American west returns in a melody aglow with the first blush of early morning as the sun peeps over the shoulders of the mountains and another Prairie Dawn begins. Edward MacDowell’s Woodland Sketches is typical of the American turn-of-the-century music. Always a lover of the great outdoors, MacDowell expressed his liking through many of his compositions, two of which are presented in the Woodland Sketches excerpt by the Symphonic ‘Pops’ Orchestra. In Autumn; At An Old Trysting Place.