The Move were the best and most important British group of the late '60s that never made a significant dent in the American market. Through the band's several phases (which were sometimes dictated more by image than musical direction), their chief asset was guitarist and songwriter Roy Wood, who combined a knack for Beatlesque pop with a peculiarly British, and occasionally morbid, sense of humor. On their final albums (with considerable input from Jeff Lynne), the band became artier and more ambitious, hinting at the orchestral rock that Wood and Lynne would devise for the Electric Light Orchestra. The Move, however, always placed more emphasis on the pop than the art, and never lost sight of their hardcore rock & roll roots.

Composed in 1771 to a libretto by Metastasio tracing the well-known biblical story of Judith and Holofernes, La Betulia liberata was Mozart’s first oratorio. Often described as a stroke of genius, this recording by Les Talens Lyriques and Christophe Rousset, with Sandrine Piau, Amanda Forsythe and Teresa Iervolino, shows the dramatic intensity of which he was already capable at the age of just fifteen and the influence of his early experiences with opera.

Reinhard Keiser’s Der blutige und sterbende Jesus is not only the very first German Passion oratorio but also a highly suspenseful contribution to the Passion season. Lost for many years, it is now available for listening on CD in the revised version of 1729. The dramatic and musical design of Keiser’s work is astonishing. As in the Italian oratorio type that gained currency after 1700, there is no Evangelist or other narrator, which means that the work has a purely dramatic structure. Even though Keiser’s librettist Christian Friedrich Hunold, whose pseudonym was »Menantes,« did not cite any one of the four Evangelists word for word in his adaptation of the Passion narrative, it is quite evident that the poetic elaboration is (primarily) modelled on Luther’s translation of the Gospel of Matthew.

For the French soprano Élisabeth Duparc, known as ‘La Francesina’, Handel composed no fewer than twelve principal roles in major works - operas and oratorios - written towards the end of his life. She took the title role in Semele, for instance, and the parts of Michal in Saul and Nitocris in Belshazzar. Sophie Junker and the Concert de l’Hostel Dieu pay tribute to her here, through some of her most successful roles as the composer’s muse.

Perhaps the greatest Quincy Jones album of the 60s - a hard-swinging batch of big band bossa tunes - and one of the greatest American takes on the bossa sound ever! Quincy really brings a lot of soul to the set - syncopating the bottom end of the tunes to really bring out the rhythms, and working with a jazzy flourish of horns that creates all these quick and clever little turns in the tunes! The sound's been heard most famously on the incredible track "Soul Bossa Nova" - an original by Quincy for the set, which has gone onto much greater fame through its use in the film Austin Powers, and a bazillion TV commercials!

In another successful "recycling" project, Vidna Obmana reconstructs original compositions which willem tanke previously had rendered on classical European organs. These variations for organ, keyboard and processors respectfully merge two musical worlds from across time, simultaneously exploring mystical/physical revelations by way of thoughtful sonic alterations. The opening five tracks encompass six canons which form The Tao of Physics; having composed the original pieces as reflections upon Fritjof Capra's East/West metaphysical writing, Willem Tanke performed them on an historic Netherlandic church organ. After careful studying, avid recycler Vidna Obmana proceeded to dismantle and reprocess the oringal acoustic recordings, reassembling them in accordance with the Canon-method, and of course, his own fine-tuned sense of sonic art…