2.85 gb

Symphonic in scale and with great dramatic power, Rachmaninov’s Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor is an underappreciated masterpiece, depicting a tremendous range of human emotions.

The Moody Blues are an English rock band formed in Birmingham in 1964, initially consisting of keyboardist Mike Pinder, multi-instrumentalist Ray Thomas, guitarist Denny Laine, drummer Graeme Edge, and bassist Clint Warwick. The group came to prominence playing rhythm and blues music. They made some changes in musicians but settled on a line-up of Pinder, Thomas, Edge, guitarist Justin Hayward, and bassist John Lodge, who stayed together for most of the band's "classic era" into the early 1970s.

After releasing String Quartets Nos. 1, 2 & 4 in 2019, the Ragazze Quartet now completes the Bartók Quartets cycle with Bartók Bound, Vol. 2 (String Quartets Nos. 3, 5 & 6).

With this new recording, Decca has pretty much sewn up the market on three generations of outstanding Bohèmes. Tebaldi and Bergonzi represent the 1950s, Freni and Pavarotti represent the 70s, and now Gheorghiu and Alagna take us into the new millennium with a recording that ranks among the very best.

Harry Bellafonte was a vocalist known for folk songs & calypso who was born in New York & spent his childhood in Jamaica. This is a recording of the charity concert held in April 1959, when Bellafonte was in his early 30s. He is backed by an orchestra conducted by Robert Coman (Robert Decormier), who used Norman Keenan’s contrabass, as well as guitar & Latin percussion ensembles. When the Japanese LP record was released for the 1st time, RCA Victor (USA) supplied a 2-track, 15 ips analogue master tape. As a result of repeated listening, it was decided that this was the best of various master tapes, so it was used for the SACD too. Sony Music Studio engineer, Yuta Nakamura transferred the tapes to 24bit/96kHz PCM, then Koji Suzuki, another engineer at Sony Music Studio did the mastering from this PCM for the LP & SACD.

Before the Flood is a double live album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and the Band, released in June 1974 on Asylum Records in the United States and Island Records in the United Kingdom. It is the seventeenth album by Dylan and the seventh by The Band, and documents their joint 1974 American tour. It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, reached number eight on the popular album chart in the United Kingdom, and has been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Nicholas Gunn, also known as Nick Gunn, is a classically trained musician and music producer. He is a Top-Ten Billboard charting musician known for his instrumental works under Nicholas Gunn and his EDM (Electronic Dance Music) works.

Two great albums from Ray "funky trumpet" Davies – not the lead singer of The Kinks, but a heck of a groovy British bandleader from the 70s! First up is an album of Themes From The Exorcist and other films – all familiar movie themes from the early 70s, penned by artists like Michel Legrand and Lalo Schifrin – but served up here by Ray's Button Down Brass in a very cool style – compressed funk, ala the best crime/cop modes of the time – but with lots of individual touches that make the songs very different than the original versions.

In the early 1970's, Marriner was among the first conductors to record Mozart's early symphonies in stereo, a fairly startling and groundbreaking enterprise for the time. Back then, most people had pretty much disregarded most of the composer's youthful writing in favor of the big later pieces. Marriner showed the world the worth of some of the earlier works. PentaTone Classics unearthed the original master tapes for a number of these Marriner recordings that Philips Records had originally done in the Quadraphonic format but never released that way. PentaTone remastered them in a series of four volumes. This last volume containing the Symphonies 6, 48, 50, 51, 52 & 55. Needless to say, Marriner and the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields perform the works with their customary sprightly vigor and refined taste, and the PentaTone engineers remastered the Philips recordings in audio highly reminiscent of how many of us recall Philips discs sounding in the early 70s.

This is the fourteenth volume release of Venus Records' SACD compilation. It is a sampler of tracks from the Venus Records' extensive library. The album includes tracks from Barry Harris, Joe Beck Trio, Denny Zeitlin Trio, Rachel Z, Joe Farnsworth, and more.