D&s Vol. 56

Dalida was one of the most important female singers in the history of French music, yet she is hardly known in Britain or America. Her career spanned 32 years from 1956 to 1987, when she committed suicide. She recorded for the Barclay label until 1970, when she moved to her brother's label, Orlando. This collection contains (as far as I know) every song she recorded for Barclay in it's original form (no remixes here). Another massive boxed set is available covering all her Orlando recordings. The CD's that make up the two boxed sets were all made available separately.

Vol. 2 in BIS' complete Sibelius Edition is given over the Finnish master's chamber music for strings and for strings and piano. Fifty years earlier, this release would've included only the "Voces intimae" string quartet. But BIS' 2007 release includes all four quartets and all four piano trios, plus 35 other works or substantial fragments lasting between 13 seconds to 32 minutes. One thing is instantly clear: Sibelius scholarship has made enormous strides since the mid-twentieth century.

"Dance Classics - The Hits" was a series of compilation albums with dance-tracks.
This article contains the complete series.

Frank Zappa - You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore. Vol. 1-6 [Purple Box] (1995) {Rykodisc}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC+CUE+LOG -> 5.40 Gb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 186 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1995 Rykodisc / The Zappa Family Trust | RCD 10561~72
Rock / Experimental Rock

To simplify my life considerably, I'm going to combine the "reviews" of all six Stage releases into a single entry, even though they were released individually. Also, to save a lot of time and effort, I'm not going to give complete track listings of the twelve discs, or do song-by-song reviews (hey, we're talking over 800 minutes of music here, give me a break). If you need to know the track listings, they're probably available through an on-line music sales site like CDNow, or an information site like the All Music Guide. There's probably a few other Zappa sites that list them as well. Maybe one day when I have the time, I'll come back and expand this section to really cover all twelve discs in detail. Until then, I'll just give some general facts and opinions, focusing on highlights and material unique to the Stage series.

Finland's Jean Sibelius is perhaps the most important composer associated with nationalism in music and one of the most influential in the development of the symphony and symphonic poem. Sibelius was born in southern Finland, the second of three children. His physician father left the family bankrupt, owing to his financial extravagance, a trait that, along with heavy drinking, he would pass on to Jean. Jean showed talent on the violin and at age nine composed his first work for it, Rain Drops. In 1885 Sibelius entered the University of Helsinki to study law, but after only a year found himself drawn back to music. He took up composition studies with Martin Wegelius and violin with Mitrofan Wasiliev, then Hermann Csillag. During this time …..

From Allmusic

VIVARTE is the legendary Sony Classical period music label known for producing outstanding recordings on period instruments. The recordings by legendary producer Wolf Erichson are done with the best recording technologies and by one of the best production teams in the world (Tritonus Music Production, Stuttgart). The label started producing when Sony Classical was founded (in 1989). The production came to a standstill recently when Wolf Erichson retired and DHM became the new label of period music within Sony Classical. Among the outstanding artists which recorded for Vivarte are: Anner Bylsma, Gustav Leonhardt, Jos Van Immerseel, Tafelmusik, Huelgas Ensemble and others.

Jascha Heifetz was a Lithuanian-born American violinist. He was born in Vilnius. As a teen, he moved with his family to the United States, where his Carnegie Hall debut was rapturously received. He had a long and successful performing and recording career; after an injury to his right (bowing) arm, he focused on teaching. The New York Times called him "perhaps the greatest violinist of all time."

The EVA labels were a group of sisterlabels made for compilations and Best-Of albums released as joint ventures between the national divisions of EMI, Virgin and Ariola. The label became active in 1984 but is now defunct in all countries. Early EVA albums were released with the logos of the three individual labels. Sometimes the label name EVA was not mentioned on those releases.