Bob Szajner Digital Ensemble 29 Audio_0116 Trio

The son of a blacksmith, Quantz had his early training, after the death of his parents, as an apprentice town musician in Merseburg.

The son of a blacksmith, Quantz had his early training, after the death of his parents, as an apprentice town musician in Merseburg. He was employed as an oboist by August II of Saxony in Dresden and in Warsaw, but sought to further his career by study of the transverse flute. At the same time he developed his abilities as a composer and his knowledge of current repertoire, with periods of study in Italy and visits to Paris and to London. In Berlin he taught the future Frederick the Great, who, on his accession to the Prussian throne in 1740, employed Quantz as a composer, principally for his own private concerts which Quantz superintended. Quantz’s treatise on flute playing has proved an informative guide to the general performance of music of the time.

A total of around eighty compositions of Joseph Labor have survived. Among them are practically no occasional works, which is connected to the fact that he was blind: for him composition was a luxury, insofar as he had to rely on the help of a scribe who had to commit the work to paper. Labor’s music is very skillfully composed, always sensuous, and first and foremost melodious; it does not require a too complete concentration on itself. In Vienna, Labor was part of Johannes Brahms’s close circle of friends. This is already the third Capriccio release with this sensitive chamber music of an mostly forgotten composer.

Reinhard Goebel, an esteemed Baroque music connoisseur, ranks Zelenka (along with J. S. Bach and Handel) among the five best composers of the first half of the 18th century. In his accompanying text, he refers to him as “grandiose and fantastic”. And the cycle of six sonatas for two oboes, bassoon and continuo serves to prove that his assertion is far from being mere hyperbole, that it is a justified opinion worthy of being giving serious thought.

Recorded under the auspices of revolutionary reggae producer Lee "Scratch" Perry, this compilation includes early versions of many of the songs that were later to make Bob Marley and the Wailers internationally famous. Previously a fairly run-of-the-mill Jamaican vocal group, the band were molded by Perry into a rootsy, Rasta-centric outfit. The polite ska rhythm of the '60s is gone, replaced by upfront rhythm guitar and bass and Carlton Barrett's exemplary one-drop reggae drumming, and Marley's vocals are tough and confident.