2022 Flac

Perhaps the single most influential popularizer of the harpsichord in the twentieth century, Wanda Alexandra Landowska began playing piano at the age of four. She had lessons with Jan Klecynski, entered the Warsaw Conservatory where she studied piano with Aleksander Michalowski, and studied in Berlin with Moritz Moszkowski. In Berlin, she also studied composition, but admitted that she was put off by the textbook rules that bound the early stages of study in that craft. She had a strong predilection for the music of Bach in her earliest piano recitals. She began to tour widely as a pianist and, increasingly, as a harpsichordist.

Although he took up the baton mainly for practical reasons and originally hoped to focus on composing, Wilhelm Furtwängler is remembered as one of the 20th century's most important, most argued-about conductors. The quasi-Brucknerian music he wrote is now of merely passing interest; Furtwängler was a truly personal, original artist only on the podium. He approached performing as a way of re-composing someone else's work, reconstituting it with a strong infusion of the performer's own ideas and personality. At their worst, Furtwängler's performances could sound mannered, full of sudden, seemingly unmotivated tempo shifts.

There are many compilations covering the productions by Status Quo in the 70s and 80s, the period when the big classics by the band were recorded. In the last 20 years, Status Quo continued to release chart albums, and pushed themselves to play in front of bigger and bigger audiences. To do this era justice, Quo’ing In – The Best of the Noughties is released as a 2CD Jewelcase, as well as a Limited Edition 3CD Deluxe Digipak featuring a bonus live-concert.

L'arca di Noè (Italian, 'Noah's Ark') is an album by the Italian singer-songwriter Franco Battiato. It was released in 1982 by EMI Italiana. During the first weeks of 1983 Battiato sold about 550,000 copies of L'arca di Noè. An article in the Italian newspaper La Stampa accused Battiato of enclosing in the LP the "culture of the new right", referring in particular to the first song of the album, "Radio Varsavia".

Most of us only think of the great Antal Dorati as a conductor, but this prominent Hungarian came from a family of musicians and started the study of music at the age of five, learning the cello a couple of years later and composition lessons beginning at 12; this in spite of the fact that he had already written several works, including three operas with original libretti, all of which he considered to be immature effords. His first composition teacher was Leo Weiner (1885-1960) who had a profound effect on Dorati's musical taste and performing background.

The long-awaited 32-disc boxed set of Robert Fripp in the studio and in concert 1977 - 1983 will be released on 27th May 2022. The set will feature many previously unreleased tracks, outtakes and rarities as well as a number of tracks appearing on CD for the first time. The largest in the series, Exposures is the ninth boxset release collecting King Crimson / Robert Fripp material from 1969 to 2008.

The Smile—the trio of Tom Skinner and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood—have announced a new live album. The Smile (Live at Montreux Jazz Festival, July 2022) will be available digitally on Wednesday, December 14. All seven songs were recorded at the Montreaux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

Babe Ruth was formed in Hatfield in 1970 by guitarist Alan Shacklock and featured vocalist Janita “Jenny” Haan, bassist Dave Hewitt and drummer Jeff Allen. Their unique brand of soulful Progressive Rock soon gained many admirers and in 1972 they signed a contract with EMI Records’ Progressive imprint, Harvest. By this time Jeff Allen had departed and Dick Powell joined on drums. The band’s line-up was also expanded by the arrival of keyboard player Dave Punshon. Babe Ruth stood out from many of their labelmates, partly due to Haan’s vocals and through the band’s ability to generate a soulful edge to their music. Their debut album, ‘First Base’ was issued in 1972 and featured the classic tracks ‘Wells Fargo’ and ‘The Mexican’ (later covered by Jellybean Benitez in 1984), which gained considerable air play in Canada (where the album gained Gold Disc status) and the USA, but the record inexplicably failed to match this success in the UK.

It was with the repertoire of French masters that the German pianist Walter Gieseking became most famous. The impressionistic piano writing of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel required the most sensitive touch and attention to color and nuance, and Gieseking's finger acuity, imaginative pedaling, and above all, preternaturally alert ear made him an ideal interpreter of this music. Nevertheless, his own repertoire ranged widely across eras and national boundaries. Largely self-taught as a pianist, Gieseking was born in Lyon, France, on November 5, 1895; with his family (his father was a distinguished doctor and entomologist), he traveled in France and Italy until he enrolled at the Hannover Conservatory, where he came under the tutelage of Karl Leimer, making his debut in 1915.