8bad Blood by Lorna Sage (2000)

Claude Challe's Buddha-Bar, Vol. II compilation has elements of Far Eastern spirituality, African song, European electronica, and Spanish spice. The first CD is very mellow for the most part. Deepak Chopra and Demi Moore, far and away the most recognizable names on the album, do a spoken word ditty on love and self-worth. People who are not fans of new age doctrine will appreciate artists such as Oliver Shanti and Consuelo Luz, both of whom contribute songs that manage to sound musical, spiritual and ethnic at once. The second CD varies from hallucinatory to groovy to fairly high-energy. "Tears Inshalla" will appeal to fans of Eastern-influenced trance. Lyrics are of almost no importance on the album. They do exist on most tracks, but they bounce around from English to Portuguese to Arabic. Bits and pieces and snatches of phrases come through here and there - just enough to make a listener feel in sync with it all. This music is intended to be an ambient journey, and while a few of the tracks seem to stray off into Never Never Land, the majority of them should appeal to fans of worldbeat.

Most piano duet arrangements were meant for the home rather than the concert hall. When you sight-read orchestral reductions at the piano, your physical involvement with the material “fills in” the missing instrumental color. Even with skillful four-hand “de-orchestrations” like Max Reger’s of the Bach Orchestral Suites, listeners run the risk of “registral fatigue”. In the main, the Speidel-Trenkner piano duo circumvents these limitations through canny pianistic means. In the C major Suite’s Forlane, for example, the oboe’s hornpipe-like melody bounces on a featherweight accompaniment.

The Palladian Ensemble's very first recording featured a number of pieces by Nicola Matteis…and for a while they used one of them almost as a signature tune. Now they have drawn more items from his huge ragbag of short pieces for two melody instruments and continuo - Ayres with a whole range of titles from Adagio to Jigg to Aria Burlesca con molto bizzarie and Giga Al Genio Turchescho - and made them the main subject of their latest disc, borrowing its title from Roger North's description of Matteis's playing: flaming as I have seen him, in a good humour he hath held the company by the ears…for more than an hour together.