This is entirely as it should be. I said of the original full-price Marco Polo issue that it was bad luck that it should appear at the same moment as the BBC Philharmonic version, since it only fell short in terms of niceties of recorded balance and body of string sound. Now at super-bargain price it is thoroughly recommendable to anyone on a restricted budget. At full price the Chandos disc offers more full-bodied orchestral sound and a still more thrustful and confident performance; on two medium-price discs Harold Farberman takes a much more expansive view, and I continue to find that this reveals far more of the fairytale magic of the score; finally, for scholarly comparison the cut version played (more than competently) by the San Diego Symphony shows how badly the work suffers from such well-meaning abridgement.'