Recorded Petrushkas abound—and Fischer's is more than decently played, if lacking the rhythmic bite and theatricality of the most famous accounts—but the three Liadov pieces, which take up almost a third of this album's playing time, are rarities. A younger contemporary and protégé of Tchaikovsky and Diaghilev, Liadov turned down the latter's commission to compose a ballet on the subject of the Firebird, which was then offered to Stravinsky with explosive results. Liadov's music mines a similar post-Rimskyian strain of exoticism, as in the three pieces recorded here—Baba-Yaga (the Russian folkloric witch already portrayed by Musorgsky), The Enchanted Lake and Kikimora, the last two composed in the same year as Firebird, 1910. Liadov's character portraiture and colouristic orchestrations are admirably served in these BBC recordings.