I feel very privileged to have met Sir Neville Marriner in 2009 when he visited the Carlton store. A brilliant speaker, his stories were not only insightful but also poignant and amusing. Since then I’ve been listening to many of his recordings with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and I don’t think I’ve yet been disappointed. This box set features recordings between 1967 and 1977 and are all works, as the sub-title suggests, from the 20th Century. And what a way to introduce someone to the music of some of the geniuses of classical music! Stravinsky, Bartok, Walton, Bizet, Butterworth, Barber and more. The majority of the recordings are tonal in composition (not a lot of experimental or Viennese Second School on here) but all are musically stunning works. With musicians like this presenting it, you simply cannot go wrong.