Supraphon's Bohuslav Martinu: Chamber Music with Viola is part of their undesignated, but apparently aiming to be complete, survey of Martinu's works and concentrates on viola-driven chamber music dating from the last dozen years left to the eminent Czech composer. All but seven of those years were spent in New York City, where he taught at Mannes College of Music; during his time in New York Martinu forged a great many friendships with talented American musicians, including violist Lillian Fuchs and her husband, violinist Joseph Fuchs. Along with those two, Martinu made the acquaintance of pianist and Polish émigré Artur Balsam .

Picture the scene, The year 2000 has passed and the new millenium is just getting underway - A new scene explodes onto the nation's Indie Dancefloors - some called it Indie Sleaze, Nu Rave, Future Disco or even Electroclash – ‘Strobes in Space’ takes you back to a time when the Indie kids re-discovered the joys of dancing, raving and having fun at Indie clubs. Day-Glo, Light Sticks, Baggy T-Shirts and Hedonism on the Dance Floors - welcome to Strobes in Space! When the Indie Dance / Nu Rave scene crashed onto the dancefloors and ignited the youth of the time it seemed like uber cool and incredible new bands were appearing from all corners of the globe almost every day. An explosion of creativity and excitement flooded the clubs and airwaves. From the UK you had bands like Bloc Party, Klaxons, Test Icicles, Playgroup, Simian Mobile Disco. Coming out of NYC you had the likes of LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fischerspooner. From France you had Phoenix from Versailles and Black Strobe coming out of Paris. DJ / Producer Tiga from Canada, Digitalism from Hamburg Germany, Cut Copy from Melbourne Australia, and from Belgium Soulwax and Goose, and even spreading to South America with CSS coming out of Sao Paolo, Brazil. It really was a global scene.

Baby I'm-A Want You is Bread's best album, showcasing its soft and hard sides (yes, Bread had a hard side) at their respective peaks. "Mother Freedom," with its crunchy James Griffin guitar solo, and the superb soft rocker "Baby I'm-A Want You" made a brilliant opening which the rest of the album had a hard time matching. The songs range from wistful sentimentality ("Diary") to spirited protest ("This Isn't What the Government," a poor man's "Taxman" with an anti-war slant). The high points outnumber the flat spots, and the playing is very polished (with unexpected hard rock flourishes on "Dream Lady"), but this is still a '70s period piece.

Original Album. Basic tracks recorded at Compass Point Studios, Nassau, The Bahamas. Vocals and additional tracks recorded at Sigma Sound, New York City. Mixed at Sigma Sound, New York City and Eldorado Studios, Los Angeles. Bonus Tracks (CD Only) Fela's Riff, Unison, Double Groove, Right Start are previously unissued roughs and sketches from the Remain In Light sessions. Video Content (DVD Only) Crosseyed And Painless and Once In A Lifetime (Rockpop German TV Appearance, 1980) are previously unissued. Licensed exclusively by Reelin' In The Years Productions, L.L.C. on behalf of ZDF Enterprises

At the dawn of the '90s, Judas Priest were in sad shape: out of touch, seemingly creatively bankrupt, coming off the two worst albums of their career, and left for dead by many observers. Trying to right the ship, Priest jettisoned longtime producer Tom Allom and his tinny '80s sound, as well as the serviceable groove drumming of Dave Holland, and brought in veteran metal producer Chris Tsangarides and onetime Racer X skinsman Scott Travis. Most importantly, though, Priest stopped trying to be a stadium act in the midst of hair metal's heyday. All those changes come into sharp focus as soon as the title cut of Painkiller starts - Travis' thunderous (and crisp-sounding) percussive maelstrom lights an immediate fire under the bandmembers' asses; Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing tear through a crushing, diabolical riff; and Rob Halford starts shrieking like a wicked witch, giving perhaps the most malevolent-sounding performance of his career…

No, you're not in Creed Taylor country yet, but you might as well be, for many of the ingredients that would garnish Benson's albums with Taylor are already present in this often enjoyable prototype. The immediate goal was to groom Benson as the next Wes Montgomery (who was about to leave Verve) - and so he covers hit tunes of the day ("Sunny," "Along Comes Mary," "Groovin'"), playing either with a big band plus voices or a neat quintet anchored by Herbie Hancock, and the sound is contoured to give his guitar a warm mellow ambience. But the eclectic Benson is his own man, as his infectious repeated-interval rhythm trademark tells us on his self-composed title track, and despite Tom McIntosh's mostly lame arrangements, George's work is always tasty and irresistibly melodic.

50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of The Moody Blues second album.
This album marked the formal debut of the psychedelic-era Moody Blues; though they'd made a pair of singles featuring new (as of 1966) members Justin Hayward and John Lodge, Days of Future Passed was a lot bolder and more ambitious. What surprises first-time listeners - and delighted them at the time - is the degree to which the group shares the spotlight with the London Festival Orchestra without compromising their sound or getting lost in the lush mix of sounds. That's mostly because they came to this album with the strongest, most cohesive body of songs in their history, having spent the previous year working up a new stage act and a new body of material (and working the bugs out of it on-stage), the best of which ended up here…

The Band From 1968 through 1975, the Band were one of the most popular and influential rock groups in the world, thematically and musically fusing the past and the present. Their work reflected the influences of country, blues, folk, and other forms of American roots music in a way that was fresh, organic, and innovative, and showed a creative maturity that was a revelation in the psychedelic era. For all their seriousness, they also knew how to groove, and their rollicking attack made a fan of Bob Dylan, whose collaboration with the group introduced them to a global audience. The Band made their reputation with their first two albums, 1968's Music from Big Pink and 1969's The Band, they documented their strength as a live act with 1972's Rock of Ages, made a splashy exit with 1978's The Last Waltz, and returned to duty with 1993's Jericho. The group's history dates back to 1958.

Cecile Ousset is a French pianist who has an exceptional facility in the work of her countryman composers. Her recordings of Satie are exquisite. She records primarily for Virgin Classics.

Planets in the Wires consists of two lengthy tracks, both of which move through darkly ambient and vibrantly rhythmic sections, while simultaneously managing to be quite different to each other.
Each piece has a rhythmic section driven by sequencers and drum machine, as well as long meditative excursions into the heart of darkness. The title is a phrase grabbed from an undisclosed TV show, which is both a direct reference to the physics involved in the music we make and an apt description of the end result. 'Echoes' was named due to the accidental but obvious Pink Floyd reference in this track, and also because everybody has a piece called 'Echoes' somewhere in their catalogue.

The third album from Levon Eskenian’s remarkable ensemble is its most adventurous to date. As well as reclaiming the music of esoteric teacher G. I. Gurdjieff for folk instrumentation, Zartir situates Gurdjieff in a tradition of Armenian bards and troubadours including Ashugh Jivani, Baghdasar Tbir and the legendary Sayat-Nova. In parallel, an emphasis on pieces for sacred dance reaches its apex in The Great Prayer, an entrancing collaboration between the Gurdjieff Ensemble and the National Chamber Choir of Armenia, which draws upon ritual music of multiple faiths. Arranger Eskenian says, “I believe The Great Prayer is more than a mere ‘composition’. It is one of the most profound and transformative pieces I have encountered in Gurdjieff’s work.” Zartir was recorded in Yerevan in 2021 and mixed and completed in Munich in November 2022 by Levon Eskenian, Tigran Kuzikyan, and Manfred Eicher.

There probably isn't a recording anywhere of Johann Sebastian Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos that can match the breakneck speeds of the performances by early music specialist Marek Stryncl and his virtuoso period ensemble Musica Florea. In cases where a jaunty Allegro or Allegro moderato can be assumed, Stryncl opts for Presto, or even Prestissimo, apparently with sound scholarship to back up his choices. This may be a legitimate Baroque practice (lay listeners could not know otherwise, without access to Stryncl's research), but there is a point where the rapid tempos will seem unduly hasty and become irritating to anyone who wants to linger over such niceties as instrumental color, articulation, harmony, and counterpoint.

The Warmth And The Freshness 1969 CD The goal here was to include the best aspects of all the familiar releases, presented to create the illusion that you're right in the room with the band as they give ideal performances of the Get Back/Let It Be material. This continuously playing lineup begins with an idealized version of the January 30 rooftop concert (same sequence of five songs), then moves indoors for the January 31 songs. Mixes were chosen that include all the vocal and instrumental parts that were played, with minimal apparent overdubs and reverb. This compilation is arguably more cohesive and consistent with the original vision of the project than any previous release. Editing was used restore abrupt fades, repair mistakes and mixing problems, stitch together sections of different mixes, and include the familiar chatter from the various releases. The only effects used were occasional EQ, time and pitch correction. No noise reduction or reverbs effects were applied.

William Smethergell's oeuvre presents an intriguing challenge. Since little more is known of his life than his birth date and the fact that he worked as an organist at two London churches and as a violist at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, we must form our impression of him solely through his music. That impression is certainly favorable–at least if we go by the two sets of six overtures published as Op. 2 (1778) and Op. 5 (1780): "Brilliantly scored, richly orchestrated works–ingenious, lively, and full of variety, bearing witness to Smethergell's great melodic inventiveness," was the verdict of klassik-heute on Op. 5 (CD 555 540-2), which Douglas Bostock and the Southwest German Chamber Orchestra Pforzheim introduced to us in 2023. The same ensemble now completes the dozen with the equally attractive Op. 2, a collection widely admired in late 18th-century London and beyond, and is now winning new friends.

When Johann Heinrich Rolle was born, Bach was 31 years old; when he died, Mozart, then in Vienna, was nearing his 30th birthday. In retrospect, it is tempting to count him among the countless "transitional" musicians who distanced themselves from the Baroque, embraced the fashionable galanteries of the time, and thus helped pave the way for the Classical era–as if they had foreseen what was to come. Rolle's career was indeed typical of his era: organist in Magdeburg, student of law, later active in Berlin–first as a legal advisor, then as a violinist and violist in the service of Frederick the Great–before returning to Magdeburg as organist, cantor, and municipal music director. In addition to a wealth of oratorios and cantatas, he produced a substantial body of instrumental music which, as this symphonic-concertante selection shows, places him firmly within the stylistic currents of his time: light-footed, elegant, spirited, and transparent–in short, so galant that the listener is delightfully engaged from start to finish.