The Albany label was established initially to promote the music of our own George Lloyd. Now it has expanded across the Atlantic and has begun the distribution of the vintage Louisville First Edition series, which has premiered many twentieth-century works on record. Here are two major American ballets, offered complete for the first time. Both come from excellent analogue masters: The Incredible Flutist dates from 1976 and the ballet Cakewalk is more recent (1982). The nicely resonant acoustic of the Louisville Macauley Theatre seems appropriate for both scores. Hershy Kay's Cakewalk draws in the main on the piano music of Louis Gottschalk, but other material is added, including traditional American minstrel tunes and in one number there is even a whiff of Stephen Foster. It is all wittily done (at times there is a flavour of Walton's Facade and there is a conscious evocation of Stravinsky's Petrushka). ''Sleight of feet'' (using the minstrel derivations) provides an engaging soft-shoe dance and the ''Pas de deux'' is very attractive indeed. Traditionally laid out, with the obligatory string solos, it even includes a musical-box effect in the form of a celeste. There are other nice inventive touches. The Magician's entry music of Act 2 brings three reminders of the Dies irae, gently yet grotesquely scored, removing any sense of sombre gravity, to introduce a charming number called ''Venus and the Three Graces''. The conductor Akira Endo has worked with the American Ballet Theatre and he displays the right flexible rhythmic touch for Kay's dry witticisms, and an obvious affection for the music.
Both here and in The Incredible Flutist the Louisville Orchestra play with vigour and finesse as well as commitment. The concert suite from Piston's ballet has appeared before and is thus familiar. As an admirer of this score I am not sure that the complete ballet has any added advantage. The music is more diffuse; the composer clearly assembled his more important ideas into the suite. The newcomer to the music might expect the flute to feature more prominently in the orchestration, but the Flutist arrives well into the ballet and the most memorable theme (with the kind of melody that stays insistently in the memory afterwards) is introduced in ''The Dance of the Merchant's Daughters''. The Flutist is the star of a Circus, which arrives in a sleepy Spanish village with plenty of gusto (and interpolated crowd noises). He is part of the snake charming act, but also charms the Merchant's most beautiful daughter and weaves his spell over the whole village before the circus moves on at the end of the ballet. Jorge Mester, Musical Director of the Louisville Orchestra at the time of the recording, is completely at home in Piston's score and makes the very best of its Spanishry as well as its atmosphere. An auspicious start for a very promising new venture.'