Better Yet

While their playing is just a little bit on the scrappy side, it is still hard not to enjoy this recording by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble. Part of the reason is the players' innate beauty of tone. Part of the reason is the players' affection for the music. Part of the reason is the players' sheer joy in making music. And part of the reason is that the music is just so darned enjoyable. Johan Svendsen may be no Edvard Grieg, but he still mines the same deep vein of Scandinavian sentimental melody and his String Octet is as charming as any piece of chamber music this side of Schubert's Octet.

Mose Allison - The Mose Chronicles: Live In London, Vol. 2 (2002) {Blue Note 7243 5 29748 2 5}
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© 2002 Blue Note | 7243 5 29748 2 5
Jazz / Hard Bop / Jazz Blues / Vocal Jazz / Piano

The second volume drawn from Mose Allison's January 2000 run at London's Pizza Express presents the artist in a professional, if relaxed, form. Volume one was billed as an in-concert look at Allison's early, oft-covered material, but actually included a healthy number of selections from his prime later-career output. This second installment comes closer to that stated goal, as every single song dates back to the '50s and '60s. As a result, it's even more remarkable that Allison finds ways to make them sound vital and fresh; "Tell Me Something" features a piano solo that's alternately gentle and dramatic, while "Just Like Livin'" is revealed as an underappreciated summation of Allison's lyrical outlook.

Bright, stylish, and lovely, Pamela Frank's recordings of Mozart's five Violin Concertos with David Zinman conducting the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra are surely among the best since Arthur Grumiaux's classic recordings with Colin Davis and the London Symphony of half a century ago. Frank's tone is lean but supple, her intonation is warm but pure, and her technique is second to none. Better yet, Frank's interpretations are ideally balanced between controlled intensity and singing expressivity, the balance that is the essence of Mozart's art. Zinman's accompaniments are themselves ideally balanced between supporting Frank and challenging her.

In the early '70s, the India Tobacco Company sponsored an annual "All-India Simla Beat Contest." These events sparked compilations of Indian rock bands, Simla Beat 70 and Simla Beat 71, that have been combined into one package on this double-CD reissue. Very, very little Indian rock from this era has been heard in the West, and the sounds are both surprising and, in some ways, disappointing. Surprising in that it's uncanny how much this sounds like the garage bands that could have been playing in any country, although it actually sounds more like bands from Europe and South America that spoke English as a second language than it does like American or British groups. Surprising, also, in that it sounds much more like 1965-1968 rock than it does like early '70s rock, although that's understandable given that it can take years for Western trends make their impact on the other side of the globe.

Legendary Swedish progressive folk-fusion-rockband Kaipa returns with their 14th studio album Urskog and a new drummer. Urskog takes the listener on a breathtaking journey through the Swedish wilderness and the changing seasons. Hans Lundin's six new compositions draw influences from the landscapes he witnesses during his solitary countryside biking treks as well as from a less known part of his own vast song catalogue. Lean back, relax and immerse yourself in the sonic forest of Urskog, or better yet use it as the soundtrack for your own wilderness excursion!

The original soundtrack for Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty features innocent, classic pop songs that capture the sweetly delusional state of the film's title character. Jula De Palma and Pink Martini's versions of the lighthearted standard "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera Sera)" bookend songs like Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool," Ann-Margret's "Slowly," and Della Reese's "Don't You Know," and selections from Rolfe Kent's quirky original score complete this enjoyable companion to one of 2000's most unique films.

The miracle is not that each succeeding disc of Vivaldi concertos by Europa Galante led by Fabio Biondi is as brilliant as the preceding discs. The miracle is not that for each succeeding disc that Biondi finds more first-rate Vivaldi concertos. The miracle is that, with so many gracefully charming, elegantly witty, and delightfully diverse concertos to chose from, that only Vivaldi's Four Seasons have become the musical wallpaper of elevators and airlines throughout the world.

There's no question about pianist Kateryna Titova's technique in her debut recital, and a good thing, too, since the program consists entirely of works by Rachmaninov, the composer of some of the most transcendentally difficult piano music of the fin de siècle. But no matter what the Russian composer asks for – be it the tumults of notes that open the Allegro agitato of his Second Piano Sonata, the ethereal ostinatos that start the Prélude in G minor, the monumental sonorities that fill the Prélude in C sharp minor, or the feathery arabesques that saturate the composer's transcription of Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee – the young Ukrainian-born, German-based pianist nails them all.