Cat in The Agraharam

OMD's glistening run of top-flight singles and chart domination came to a temporary but dramatic halt with Dazzle Ships, the point where the band's pushing of boundaries reached their furthest limit. McCluskey, Humphreys, and company couldn't take many listeners with them, though, and it's little surprise why - a couple of moments aside, Dazzle Ships is pop of the most fragmented kind, a concept album released in an era that had nothing to do with such conceits. On its own merits, though, it is dazzling indeed, a Kid A of its time that never received a comparative level of contemporary attention and appreciation. Indeed, Radiohead's own plunge into abstract electronics and meditations on biological and technological advances seems to be echoing the themes and construction of Dazzle Ships…

Dvořák's two splendidly tuneful serenades are so attractive that you will find the tunes stuck in your head for days afterwards. If this makes you crazy, then you might want to exercise caution before playing them! Each is written for different forces: one for strings, the other for winds (with a single double bass to reinforce the bottom end). The Serenade for Winds is particularly special, being the ultimate example of a form that Czech composers really did better than anyone else. The wind writing has that essential "outdoors" quality, but it's also completely smooth and euphonious. Sir Neville Marriner's band does the music proud. This is one of their best recordings.

This premiering album by Neville Marriner includes modern, witty instrumental arrangements of the most famous arias and scenes from Verdi and Puccini’s operatic masterpieces: Nessun dorma, La donna è mobile… Don’t miss the moving chant of the ondes Martenot in Madama Butterfly or the voluble cimbalom in the Anvil Chorus from Il trovatore!

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields (ASMF) is an English chamber orchestra, based in London. John Churchill, then Master of Music at the London church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Neville Marriner founded the orchestra as "The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields", a small, conductorless string group. The ASMF gave its first concert on 13 November 1959, in the church after which it was named. In 1988, the orchestra dropped the hyphens from its full name.

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields (ASMF) is an English chamber orchestra, based in London. John Churchill, then Master of Music at the London church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Neville Marriner founded the orchestra as "The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields", a small, conductorless string group. The ASMF gave its first concert on 13 November 1959, in the church after which it was named. In 1988, the orchestra dropped the hyphens from its full name.

One of the early pioneers of the Baroque movement, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields has been a leading ensemble in early music for more than half a century. They are one of the most recorded chamber orchestras of the industry, mostly under the baton of the legendary Sir Neville Marriner. This collection of their Vivaldi realisations includes the very popular version of the Gloria with Barbara Hendricks, and concertos with soloists Christopher Parkening, Maurice André, and Iona Brown.

Newcastle-born and -based, Charles Avison issued his string arrangements of harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti in 1744. Forty-two of Scarlatti's sonatas had been published by Roseingrave in London five years earlier and it was these which, by and large, provided Avison with his material. 'By and large', since, as Stephen Roe remarks in his note, the sonatas included only two slow movements and Avison, planning 12 concertos in the slow-fast-slow-fast scheme favoured by his teacher, Geminiani, required 24.