"night Owls" Ep 335 (vhs Dub ex Ubc Master)

n these days of big boxes, DG really ought to gather together everything Markevitch did and issue it as a set. He was a genius, and his recordings with the Lamoureux Orchestra, especially, combine interpretive brilliance with a classic French instrumental style that no longer exists. They are irreplaceable, and the playing here is amazing. Rimsky-Korsakov’s music demands just the sort of diamond-like precision and clarity that was Markevitch’s stock in trade as a conductor. There are more raucous, more traditionally Russian versions of The Golden Cockerel Suite available (Järvi’s for example), but none that point up the music’s anticipations of Stravinsky so compellingly. Both here and in the May Night Overture, Rimsky-Korsakov becomes a prophetically modern master.

Demon Music will release Renaissance, an 11-disc M People career-spanning box set in February that features albums, remixes, rarities and two DVDs.

Superstar violinist Anne Akiko Meyers’ imagination and ingenuity knows no bounds. Her idea to persuade leading living composer Morten Lauridsen to transform his choral masterpiece, O Magnum Mysterium, into a work for violin and choir is a masterstroke. Teaming up with conductor Grant Gershon – who first collaborated with Anne as chamber musicians over 40 years ago – and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, for whom Lauridsen was their first Composer in Residence, Anne rounds out this digital EP with three other arrangements for violin and chorus of ever-popular works by J. S. Bach. The result is gold dust for the holiday season.