The works in this collection span the career of Nikita Koshkin, beginning with his stylized adaptation of Spanish music in the Hispanic Suite. This is not only the earliest piece in our set, ca. 1973, but it is also one of Koshkin's two earliest surviving compositions, the other being his Three Pieces for Guitar, dated 1972. Pan, the second work in this collection, was composed in 1983 and was the culmination of the pairing of two diverse influences, Greek mythology and the concert waltz. The Greek god Pan, who had the legs, horns, and beard of a goat, was the protector of shepherds and their flocks. In Koshkin's words: "The story is about the ugly god Pan and his sudden unhappy love for the nymph Syrinx. The word 'panic' comes from the name of this god because he was able to throw a kind of horror to those who disturbed him during his rest. According to the myth, Pan saw Syrinx and ran after her, trying to catch her, but she reached the river and begged the god of the river to save her. He did so by turning her into a reed, and Pan therefore could embrace only the reeds. He then took one of them and made a flute from it, which we now call the 'pan flute'. Similarly, Tristan Playing the Lute, also from 1983, evokes the spirit of Tristan from the Arthurian legend of 'Tristan and Isolde', set in a playful adaptation of traditional English lute music, at least initially"