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“As another San Francisco Ballet season draws to a close, it’s a good time to turn the spotlight on the magnificent SF Ballet Orchestra, led by music director Martin West, which plays such a vital role in the success of the Company’s performances. Now celebrating its 40th anniversary, this Grammy Award-winning ensemble, under West’s direction, has recently released a delightful album of music by Moritz Moszkowski (1854 -1925), entitled From Foreign Lands. … Given that the music of Moszkowski has been unfairly neglected for so long, I asked Martin West what had prompted his decision to record the album. It turned out to be a ballet choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky for the Company in 2013 – a work entitled From Foreign Lands, from which the album takes its title. ‘We played his [Moszkowski’s] music for Ratmansky’s From Foreign Lands,’ says West, ‘and it brought back memories of his Spanish Dances, which I played when I was a boy. So Reference Recordings and I decided to look for some of his music that we could record, and this was the end product.’ … The good news now is that Martin West has hinted at future recordings of music by Moszkowski. ‘I have enough music in my head to do two more discs,’ he says. ‘There are two or three major works, including a full ballet, but we could only find parts of it. And there are three major orchestral suites of his that have never been recorded, plus shorter pieces like those included on this album.’” —Gilly Lloyd, ArtsPreview Blog