Chopin’s 21 Nocturnes, often described as ‘songs of the night’, are among the most well-known and beautiful of Chopin’s short solo piano works.

Preserved in three different libraries, the Marciana in Venice, the Library of the Naples Conservatory, and the State and University Library in Hamburg, the six cantatas that make up this world-premiere recording were composed by Benedetto Marcello in the early 18th century. These are thus youthful works, quite interesting for the originality of their writing, which helps us understand why their author was so highly regarded during his lifetime - even called the “prince of music” - and also by posterity, as he managed to blend his personal sensibility with lessons drawn from tradition and the influences of a life rich in cultural encounters.

Paul Hindemith described Reger as ‘the last giant of music’. When Schoenberg founded his Society for Private Musical Performances in 1918, Max Reger, along with Debussy and Bartók, was one of the most frequently performed composers. Admiring Reger as an important innovator, Schoenberg promoted his music because ‘he still remains unfamiliar’ and ‘I consider him a genius’. Even a century after his death, much of Reger’s music appears on concert programmes only very occasionally. This new album by the Gävle Symphony Orchestra and conductor Jaime Martín includes two of Reger’s finest orchestral works written towards the end of his life.

Sir Andrew Davis was a talented keyboard player as a child and teenager, and after study with Peter Hurford, at St Albans, he spent four years at the University of Cambridge as organ scholar at Kings College, under Sir David Willcocks. It was this period of his life that sparked his love for and appreciation of the organ works of J.S. Bach, which remained a lifelong passion. Sir Andrew made all the transcriptions on this album for the BBC Philharmonic, and four of them were recorded in November 2023. Sadly, Sir Andrew died before the final recording sessions for the album could take place (September 2024): we are immensely grateful that he completed the arrangements, and very thankful to Martyn Brabbins for completing the recording with the sense of style, love, and affection that Sir Andrew would have admired.

The 2015 expansion of Tug of War spans three discs: a new remix of the album, a remastered version of the original 1982 mix, and a collection of demos and outtakes.
Like 1970's McCartney, 1980's McCartney II functioned as a way for Paul McCartney to clear the decks: to experiment and recalibrate in the aftermath of his band falling apart. This means 1982's Tug of War is, in many ways, the very first Paul McCartney solo album, a record recorded not at home but in a studio, a record made without Wings and not co-credited to Linda, who nevertheless is present as a backing vocalist. McCartney recognized this album as something of a major opportunity, so he revived his relationship with Beatles producer George Martin and brought in several heavy-hitters as guests, including his hero Carl Perkins, his Motown counterpart Stevie Wonder, fusion star Stanley Clarke…

Recorded in 1960. Classic straight forward roots blues. This is a wonderful cd of "true" blues with no fluff or frills. Nothing but acoustic duets using vocals, guitar and harmonica with astonishing results. The subject matte of the songs go to the hard basics of black southern life with references both lyrical and Sonny's wonderful "field hollers", whoops, and their combined work chants. Sonny and Brownie represented a strong link to where the modern blues came from and gave a path to how it developed, and this cd is an excellent example of that. A treasure for any real blues lover or anyone interested in understanding the genre.

Considered by many to be his finest single album, Coltrane finds John Coltrane displaying all of the exciting elements that sparked brilliance and allowed his fully formed instrumental voice to shine through in the most illuminating manner. On tenor saxophone, he's simply masterful, offering the burgeoning sheets of sound philosophy into endless weavings of melodic and tuneful displays of inventive, thoughtful, driven phrases. Coltrane also plays a bit of soprano saxophone as a primer for his more exploratory work to follow. Meanwhile, bassist Jimmy Garrison, drummer Elvin Jones, and especially the stellar McCoy Tyner have integrated their passionate dynamics into the inner whole of the quartet. The result is a most focused effort, a relatively popular session to both his fans or latecomers, with five selections that are brilliantly conceived and rendered…

East of Eden's second album had to be one of the least commercial albums ever to enter the British Top 30, as well as one of the most stylistically diverse. The term "progressive rock" fit as well as any, yet much of it was rather along the lines of early jazz-rock fusion, with lengthy hard-to-hum instrumental passages. But there was a lot of Eastern influence as well, especially on those pieces that highlighted Dave Arbus' violin and flute. Some of the absurdist humor along the lines of Frank Zappa and the Soft Machine makes itself known too, though East of Eden were more serious than Zappa and less whimsical than the Softs. Indeed, it's a rather sober affair that sometimes approaches gloominess, and like the late '60s/early '70s Soft Machine, it's more oriented toward virtuosic instrumental sections than vocals and lyrics…