D&s Vol. 59

The Lovely Mood Music label's Coffee Bar Lounge series of collections invariably and effortlessly creates a cozy atmosphere for relaxation. It is recommended both for minutes of a coffee break or a summer picnic, and as background music for creative personalities in their good undertakings.

We sometimes forget how closely the didactic aspect of The Well-Tempered Clavier is bound up with the various upheavals of the 1720s which refocused Johann Sebastian Bach on his roles as father and teacher. His ambitious scheme for associating a prelude and a fugue with each of the major and minor keys could easily have become something of a tedious chore. But, on the contrary, it reveals Bach’s highly personal genius for constant creative renewal within the framework of two fixed forms. Richard Egarr presents the complete First Book on a copy by Joel Katzman of a 1638 Ruckers, using the temperament which recent research suggests Bach himself advocated.

Recorded at Delta Studio in Canterbury (date unspecified) and released in 2007 on the fusion/prog label Moonjune, Numero d'Vol is an inspired improv session between famous Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper, avant-garde jazz sax player Simon Picard, jazz keyboardist Steve Franklin, and drummer – and This Heat mastermind – Charles Hayward. The album's title is French for "Flight Number" and, yes, inspiration flies high in this music.

One of Bach's more magnificent extended choruses graces the cantata BWV 12, and another less substantial but no less impressive one dominates BWV 38. These works represent some of Bach's most profoundly affecting and musically sophisticated textual and emotional representations, the former an ideal evocation of "weeping and wailing" with its unmistakably vivid chromatic descending bass-line, lurching rhythm, and agonized melody (which Bach later re-used in his B minor Mass). The pungent, reedy sound of the oboe adds perfect color and character to the whole cantata, and of course, Bach's ingenious writing, especially the obbligato parts, lifts all three of these cantatas beyond the functional to the highest artistic and spiritual level.

‘A thoughtful, well-recorded performance of one of the great monuments of Western music, on an instrument for which the composer conceived it, played by a dexterous, sympathetic, and well-informed musician.’ – FANFARE
‘This set shines revitalizing light on music we may have thought we knew inside out, but which is always loaded with surprises.’ – SOUND STAGE

Moins médiatique que les autres chanteurs de son époque, Henri Tachan n'en est pas moins un fin lettré qui, comme Léo Ferré et tant d'autres, flirte avec Verlaine, Rimbaud et Baudelaire. Son goût musical pour Beethoven ou Schubert se ressent dans les sonorités de ses musiques comme dans la chanson Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert et Rossini.

VA - The Famous Sound of Three Blind Mice Vol. 1-3 (1987-1989) {TBM Records, TBM CD 9001~03, W. Germany}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.22 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 514 Mb | Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 1987-1989 Three Blind Mice | TBM CD 9001~03
Jazz / Post Bop / Contemporary Jazz

During the 70s, the Japanese jazz scene was in an incredibly intense phase - one that had players breaking out of older modes that were often strict copies of American jazz, and working in newer styles that often blended soul, modal, and spiritual jazz with freer-thinking ideas and more Eastern-inspired modes. The result was an incredible batch of music that was probably more strongly recorded by the Three Blind Mice label than any other Japanese imprint - because unlike some of their contemporaries, TBM didn't fill their catalog with work by American players, and often focused exclusively on Japanese artists.

30 years after his death, DG commemorates the quintessential “Kapellmeister” with a 42-CD set of Complete Deutsche Grammophon Orchestral Recordings by Eugen Jochum (1902-1987), presented in original jackets.
In addition to the complete symphonic cycles of Bruckner (the first ever complete recorded cycle), Beethoven and Brahms, this set offers the entire Jochum orchestral recordings for DG for the first time. Several recordings appear on CD for the first time, including recordings of Weber, Mozart and Beethoven.