Birdsong by The Seasons

Admirers of Kyung-Wha Chung will hardly mind the poor value in time-length (Kennedy, also on EMI, does not have a coupling, either), when it so winningly adds to Chung’s discography. It is the more welcome when, since her switch from Decca to EMI, new recordings from her have been all too few. This is an unashamedly traditional performance, one which has little or no regard for period practice, but gives us a sequence of four concertos in warmly relaxed readings. Unlike those of Kennedy and Mutter they avoid extreme speeds, either fast or slow.

Various Artists - Chicago Hit Factory: The Vee-Jay Story 1953-1966 (2014) {10CD Set Charly Records CHARLY 915 B}
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© 1953-66, 2014 Charly Records / Vee-Jay | CHARLY 915 B
Rhythm & Blues / Doo-Wop / Blues / Soul / Gospel / Jazz

Celebrating sixty years since the launch of one of the most successful independent record labels in US Popular music. Received wisdom would have us believe that before Motown, no black-owned record company had made a significant impact on the US mainstream. However, the actuality is something else entirely. Way back in the early 50s, long before Berry Gordy had written his first song, VEE-JAY RECORDS - a black, family owned and run, Chicago-based label - was establishing itself via a steady stream of Blues, R&B, DooWop and Gospel hits.

Supreme master of the Baroque concerto and one of the finest composers of sacred music, Vivaldi is now also being rediscovered as an opera composer of genius. Some credit for this must go to Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco, whose performances of Giustino since 1985 have made this colourful and dramatic work the most widely played of Vivaldi's operas in modern times. Giustino contains an endless flow of Vivaldian melodic inspiration and inventive orchestration; the score calls for a psaltery and for birdsong, while the goddess Fortune descends to the tune of Spring from the Four Seasons. This first recording is based on a concert performance in Rotterdam in 2001; the fine cast is headed by Dominique Labelle as the empress Arianna and Francesca Provvisionato as the plough-boy emperor Giustino.