The music of the Bulgarian composer-conductor Emil Tabakov (b. 1947) explores the darker side of the human spirit in epic scores as austere as they are powerful. His mighty Fifth Symphony, a work almost an hour in length, is obsessive and violent, with the two outer movements, wild kaleidoscopes of whirling colours and driving energy, framing a tragic slow movement and a sardonic march. The much earlier Double-Bass Concerto, which sits downstream from Shostakovich, shows the same grim sense of humour in the teeth of the dancing indifference of fate. © Toccata Classics