Three years after his solo album The Wildest Wish to Fly, pop producer and songwriter Rupert Hine came back under the disguise of the pseudo-group Thinkman. The three musicians who accompanied him in interviews and lip-sync performances were actors, the whole project becoming a concept revolving around media manipulation. The Formula, Thinkman's first album, sticks close to this idea (the title track begins with the lines "It's an interview/But it's a second take"). During the early '80s, Hine followed an evolution that led him from disturbing art pop to intelligent but more commercial songs. The Formula is pretty much middle-of-the-road but has a harder edge than the singer's previous LP. Songs like the title track "The Ecstasy of Free Thought" and "The Days of a Champion" are fueled by newly found energy and feature the hook-filled melodies that made Hine an important part of England's '80s pop music…

Legendary, critically acclaimed Suk recordings of Martinù’s concertos in newly re-mastered form. In 1973, together with the conductor Georg Solti, Josef Suk premiered Martinù’s first violin concerto in Chicago. This 'Paris-era' concerto was originally written for the famous violinist Samuel Dushkin. However, it was later mislaid, only to be rediscovered and premiered some 40 years later.

Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen has of late been appearing ever more frequently on the stages of opera houses worldwide. Two seemingly different worlds – the animal and human – blend together in their relentless cycle and consequently the work poses a great challenge to staging teams. Janácek’s specific musical phraseology brings to the story a unique emotional depth which, given a heart-felt interpretation, resonates in the audience’s souls. In Supraphon’s catalogue this masterwork features in two complete recordings – those by the conductors Bohumil Gregor (1970) and Václav Neumann (1980). The latter had previously recorded the opera back in 1957 with the soloists Hana Böhmová (Bystrouška, the vixen), Rudolf Asmus (Forester), Libuše Domanínská (Goldskin, the fox) and other superlative singers.

The origination of Mozart’s extensive Clarinet Quintet in A major (1789), as well as that of Brahms’s opus some hundred years later (1891), was primarily inspired by the mastery of a virtuoso clarinettist. In the case of Mozart, it concerned the famous Anton Stadler, to whom the composer also dedicated other solo compositions for clarinet. The piece’s 1789 premiere in Vienna was concurrently the premiere of the basset clarinet, in whose construction Stadler himself participated. Brahms was inspired to write his Quintet by the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld. Bearing witness to the composition’s success is the fact that at its premiere (1891) the second movement with the melody spiced up “Hungarian-style” was repeated on no less than three occasions.

In 1974, Richard Thompson and the former Linda Peters released their first album together, and I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight was nothing short of a masterpiece, the starkly beautiful refinement of the promise of Thompson's solo debut, Henry the Human Fly. In Linda Thompson, Richard found a superb collaborator and a world-class vocalist; Linda possessed a voice as clear and rich as Sandy Denny's, but with a strength that could easily support Richard's often weighty material, and she proved capable of tackling anything presented to her, from the delicately mournful "Has He Got a Friend for Me" to the gleeful cynicism of "The Little Beggar Girl."

Viktor Lazlo (real name Sonia Dronier) is a French-Belgian singer of Grenadian and Martiniquan descent. She studied in Belgium, where she is primarily known. Her biggest hit was "Breathless" in 1987. That year she also hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 1987 held in Brussels. Dronier took her stage name from Paul Henreid's character Victor Laszlo in the 1942 film Casablanca. She sings in French, English, Spanish and German. Most of her albums were released in an English/international and a French version. Also, numerous compilation albums have been released.