A Festival of Ballet, a 50-CD box set, covers the whole range of ballet, from its origins as an integral part of the Baroque operas of Purcell and Rameau, through its establishment in the 18th and 19th centuries in France and Russia in the form that we now think of as `classical ballet", to the development of a more modern style -- including the concept of abstract ballets -- in the 20th century that found its flowering in the celebrated works of Fokine, Balanchine, Tudor, Ashton, MacMillan and many others. The set begins with substantial highlights from the three great Tchaikovsky ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, and then come more works by Russian composers such as Prokofiev, Glazunov, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Khachaturian. The rest of the set consists of basically national groupings of composers -- mainly French, English, German and American -- until the last four CDs, which contain ballet music from operas, oratorios and plays. Many of the ballet scores are heard complete, but most of the full-length works are represented by highlights that cover all the best-known sections. Apart from the three Tchaikovsky ballets, other long works that have been highlighted include Giselle, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Don Quixote, Coppélia, Sylvia and La Fille mal gardée. The recordings feature the world"s greatest orchestras under many outstanding international conductors such as Herbert von Karajan, Riccardo Muti, André Previn and Sir Simon Rattle, as well as leading ballet experts like John Lanchbery, Barry Wordsworth, Terence Kern and Robert Irving. Also heard are authoritative recordings of ballet scores that use arrangements of music not originally written for the dance, conducted by the men who so skilfully put them together, like Sir Charles Mackerras (Pineapple Poll) and Manuel Rosenthal (Gaîté Parisienne). As well as all the most popular ballet music, the set includes some rarities of great interest, such as the first complete recording of John Antill"s Corroboree (1950), a spectacular score that vividly portrays the primitive ceremonies and dances of the Australian aborigines, and Charles Koechlin"s tone poem Les BandarLog that formed the bulk of the score for Antony Tudor"s atmospheric 1967 ballet Shadowplay. Also heard here is Cole Porter"s only classical ballet score, the 1923 work Within the Quota which, coincidently, was orchestrated by Charles Koechlin.