Tangram marked the beginning of a new musical direction for Tangerine Dream. It's closer to straight-ahead, melodic new age music and more tied to their soundtrack material. The first of the two side-long pieces progresses through several different passages that use gently brushed acoustic guitars as well as the requisite synthesizers. For new age fans, this is the first glimmering of Tangerine Dream's eventual direction during the '80s.
Grover Washington, Jr., has long been one of the leaders in what could be called rhythm & jazz, essentially R&B-influenced jazz. Winelight is one of his finest albums, and not primarily because of the Bill Withers hit "Just the Two of Us." It is the five instrumentals that find Washington (on soprano, alto, and tenor) really stretching out. If he had been only interested in sales, Washington's solos could have been half as long and he would have stuck closely to the melody. Instead he really pushes himself on some of these selections, particularly the title cut. A memorable set of high-quality and danceable soul-jazz.
Forget the movie, Abbado’s Alexander Nevsky is more vivid than anything you’ll see on the screen. With gutsy singing from the London Symphony Chorus, a fine alto solo from Obratsova in “The Field of the Dead,” and terrifying sonorities in The Crusaders in Pskov, this really is the best version available. Abbado pulls out all the stops for the thrilling Battle on the Ice–in the movie the music for this sequence isn’t continuous, and in Temirkanov’s version of the complete file score they resort to battle noises to fill in the gaps just when the action reaches a peak of frenzy.