This group from Norway is strongly evocative of King Crimson, Genesis, Gentle Giant along with newer symphonic prog bands like Anglagard and Anekdoten with a dash of Scandinavian folk and classical influences thrown into the mix.
Their albums contain long and complex tracks featuring lush, vintage keyboard sounds, making extensive use of Mellotron, Mini-Moog, Hammond C-3 and harpsichord, along with beautiful electric and acoustic guitar playing, a complex rhythm section along with flutes, recorder, saxophones, mandolins and various other instruments providing a very full, symphonic sound.
Highly recommended for fans of the early progressive greats and symphonic prog music.
Born in Graz, Austria, Böhm studied law and earned a doctorate on this subject. He later studied music at the Graz Conservatory. On the recommendation of Karl Muck, Bruno Walter engaged him at Munich's Bavarian State Opera in 1921. Darmstadt (1927) and Hamburg (1931) were the next places he resided as a young conductor, before succeeding Fritz Busch as head of Dresden's Semper Opera in 1934. He secured a top post at the Vienna State Opera in 1943, eventually becoming music director.
Duke Ellington was widely recorded in concert over his many decades in jazz, but the discovery of a previously unreleased live tape from 1950, in surprisingly listenable fidelity, is still an occasion worthy of applause. Of course the mere surfacing of the recording wouldn't mean a thing if it didn't have that swing, and this set does indeed. Accompanied by a relatively small group consisting of trumpeter Ray Nance (who also sings), clarinetist/tenor saxophonist Jimmy Hamilton, alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, bassist/bass clarinetist Harry Carney, both Sonny Greer and Butch Ballard on drums, and Ellington's longtime co-writer Billy Strayhorn also on piano, plus the vocalist Kay Davis, Ellington is in fine form throughout…
The album "El Paradís de les Paraules" of the musician and Valencian singer Carles Denia, has been considered by the magazine "Sons" as the best album of Catalan folk music in 2011. The work itself has been to put music to the Arab-Valencian poets between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. The translation of texts from Arabic into Catalan has been the work of the prestigious Valencian poet Josep Piera, with the help of the philologist Joseph Gregori.
In the 41 - year gap between these two sonatas Fauré, increasingly beset by deafness, withdrew into a more private, recondite world all his own. The Second, in consequence, has never enjoyed the popularity of the First—and in fact was conspicuous by its absence from the CD catalogue until this welcome new release. Collectors may recall that when Lydia Mordkovitch and Gerhard Oppitz recorded the First for Chandos they preferred to couple it with Richard Strauss's early Sonata in E flat. Comparison of the two teams in the A major Sonata, Op. 13, leaves me in no doubt that the newcomers would be my first choice. In saying that, I don't want to underestimate Mordkovitch. But with her fine-spun, silken tone and sensitively tapered phrasing she is far too often overpowered by Oppitz, who in the resonant acoustic of St Luke's Church, Chelsea, emerges not only too loud but also rather too often the victim of his own over-generously used right pedal. The Cologne venue accorded to Mintz and Bronfman is kinder: though anything but timid Bronfman preserves far greater textural clarity, and never allows his piano to outweigh Mintz's violin unless at the composer's own behest.(Gramophone, 1/1988)