The Virgin Mary surrounded by Saint Catherine, Saint Dorothy, Saint Barbara and Saint Margaret. This frequent medieval representation bears witness to the great reverence paid to the Virgin Mary and her companions which strongly influenced the mysticism of the late Middle Ages. The repertoire of the recording recalls the thorny lives of these female martyrs and the veneration of them, as preserved in the 13th- and 14th-century manuscripts of the Benedictine Convent of St George at Prague Castle. The choral repertoire is supplemented by polyphonic Marian motets from the most significant polyphony manuscripts of this period..

Released in 1970, Van Morrison's Moondance was a hit commercially and critically. Encouraged by his manager, Morrison and a sextet – including three players from the Moondance sessions – hit the studio and delivered His Band & the Street Choir in time for that year's holiday season. Morrison responded to the pressure by relaxing into it. The feel here is loose, often celebratory. He digs deep into his long-held fascination with the New Orleans R&B tradition for inspiration. "Domino" is his highest charting single. The funky guitar lick, left-hand piano rumbling, driving, Memphis-style horns, and pumping bassline kick things off in grand party style.

"If the voice don't say it, the guitar will play it," raps Saffron on "Pork-U-Pine," the third track on Jeff Beck's minimally titled Jeff. And he does. Beck teams with producer Andy Wright, the man responsible for his more complete immersion into electronic backdrops on his last outing, You Had It Coming. This time the transition is complete. Beck used electronica first on Who Else!, moved a little more into the fire on You Had It Coming, and here merges his full-on Beck-Ola guitar heaviness with the sounds of contemporary spazz-out big beats and noise.

It is well known that Bach was a keen recycler – always borrowing old musical ideas and refashioning them for different expressive purposes. The Oster Oratorium is no exception in that its origins can be traced back to a secular cantata written in 1725 to celebrate the birthday of Duke Christian of Saxony-Weissenfels. Little over a month later the cantata was performed again, this time with an amended text and new recitatives to suit the celebration of Easter Sunday, but it was not until 1735 that the composer, having made further alterations to the work’s structure and scoring, chose to give it the revised title ‘oratorio’.

First performed at the Paris Opéra in 1802, Sémiramis by Charles-Simon Catel is an example of the revival at that time of the tragédie lyrique inherited from Gluck. A work with a touch of exoticism (Babylon), expressing the pathos of isolation, but also with pomp in its ambitious finales, the work bade farewell to the ‘Louis-XVI style’ and announced, in a neo-Classical style, the grand opéra of the Romantic period. But it came at a time of polemics between supporters and detractors of the new Paris Conservatoire, where Catel, at that time professor of harmony there, had made so many enemies that the audience pit at the Opera was bristling with vengeful hostility when the curtain rose on the first act…

This present CD recording of 12 Motets for 1, 2 & 3 Men’s Voices and Basso continuo of Giacomo Carissimi? might be best considered an oddity as much as an attempt to satisfy a curiosity. Since there are no existing autograph Motet manuscripts of Giacomo Carissimi, all manuscripts that have been transcribed by Consortium Carissimi are transcriptions themselves of Carissimi’s contemporaries. These transcriptions of both sacred and secular music come from Library Manuscripts or Early Printed Editions, consequently much if not all of this music has not been performed and heard since.

As the organist of the Dresden Frauenkirche, the composing of chorale preludes was one of the main activities of Gottfried August Homilius (1714-1785). In addition to the classical chorale prelude for solo organ, Homilius also cultivated a remarkably unique form: the arranging of a chorale with the use of an obbligato melody instrument. Like no other composer, Homilius concerned himself with this genre. The majority of the twenty-eight known chorale preludes of this type survive in a Dresden manuscript which is preserved in a library in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Best Buy Presents Collector's 2 CD Set: Fleetwood Mac - Tour 97. Comes with a 34 page booklet with bios on each artist. Promo.

Jean Marie Leclair's music has always been of great enjoyment to me (I especially love his violin concertos.) These sonatas for transverse flute and basso continuo consisting of viola de gamba and harpsichord are so very appealing. I do love the sound of the Baroque flute; it is so very mellow and soothing. The sonatas on this recording consists of four movements (there is one that is three movements) which contain two fast and two slow movements each. They are wonderful especially the ones in minor keys. I can visualize people sitting around a well appointed "Drawing room" in powdered wigs listening to this music.

Greatest Hits 1990–1999: A Tribute to a Work in Progress… is a compilation album by American rock band The Black Crowes, released June 20, 2000, by American Recordings & Columbia Records. It features material from all of their studio albums up to that point, and reached #143 on the Billboard 200.

For those who spent the whole of the 1970s actually living on the dark side of the moon rather than listening to it, A Collection of Great Dance Songs offers an opportunity to hear some of the most timeless, thoughtful, and influential rock music ever made by rich, bitter Englishmen. The album's title certainly seems less deceptive now, considering just how much of the Floyd's instrumental ambience eventually seeped into the techno and dance scenes of the '90s. Initially released during one of those yawning epochs between studio albums (namely, The Wall and The Final Cut) this best-of collection cherry picks from Pink Floyd's 1970s material–the era when the band (and they were a band in those days) bestrode the stadiums of the world like light-show leviathans and sold records by the tons–and is only undermined by the omission of sprawling masterpieces such as "Echoes" and "Atom Heart Mother" (such were the time limitations of the old vinyl format). Never mind the dance floor, this a great portable Pink Floyd collection for long car journeys.