Different Cavalier

These New Haven rockers were already local garage heroes when they changed their name from the Shags to Pulse in 1968. Their sole album, a superb hard rock collection featuring searing guitar solos, appeared on the tiny Poison Ring label the following year, but failed to catch on, despite being released in Europe as well…

Jacques Ibert’s piano music isn’t exactly the most exciting part of his output, amounting to a series of short picturesque pieces written in a bland neo-classical vein, with just a hint of impressionism or humor here and there to liven up the expression. Lack of both imagination and strong features have kept these pieces away from the current concert repertoire, but on CD they make nice if quickly forgotten listening. The collection of Histoires, including the famous Le petit âne blanc (The Little White Donkey), comes off the best, along with Les rencontres, a little suite in the form of a ballet that displays some lively melodic figures underlined by slightly spicy harmonies, as in the softly swinging The Creoles. The other pieces do little else than round off the total timing of the CD. Hae-won Chang plays with charm and delicacy, with a clean and neat technique that is just what these unpretentious pieces require. The recording is well balanced and truthful.

A playful callback to the 1970s variety television show of the same name, Wheeltappers and Shunters is a title befitting of what Clinic was looking to achieve with their eighth studio album: "a satirical take on British culture - both high and low.

Tancredi, which was based on Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata and was first heard in 1813, is most widely remembered for its overture, but this excellent Naxos set makes a strong case for the piece. It completely displaces the previous versions from Sony and RCA, and the eminent Rossini scholar and conductor, Alberto Zedda, proves a far more resilient, generally brisker and lighter Rossini interpreter than his predecessors. Sumi Jo is superb as the heroine, Amenaide, in dazzlingly clear coloratura, as well as imaginative pointing of phrase, rhythm and words.

Paisiello (1740-1816) was the master of Italian opera buffo and a significant influence on Mozart. His orchestral writing and musical characterizations are deft and dramatic, and he was the first to introduce ensemble finales into comic operas. Don Chisciotte is an early work, premiered in Naples (where he spent most of his life) in 1769, and it already shows all the skills that made his work popular throughout Europe. The libretto by Lorenzi is based on a 1719 play that deals with the Don's visit to a noble court and the tricks that are played on him there, drawing in material from elsewhere in Cervantes' novel, including his tilt with the windmills. The characters are reduced from aristocrats to middle-class Neapolitans familiar to the opera's audiences, and they are treated with parodistic irony.

This three-disc set of all of the studio recordings of Mozart's piano concertos and sonatas made by German pianist Edwin Fischer between 1933-1947 may elicit different responses from his fans than from listeners not already persuaded of his greatness.

A Spanish band Baccara became popular at the end of the 70-ies, the most famous hits being «Cara Mia», «Sorry I’m A Lady». Baccara sold the most copies of their single and featured in the Guiness Book of World Records, as the highest selling female band. The band members have changed over the years and the current team is different to the original ones. The original band singers Mayte Mateos and Maria Mendiola met during one of the Spanish ballet troupe’s tour. They decided to form a music band by singing cover songs in clubs and hotels. Shortly after that they met their first producer from RCA studio. Together they released their first single «Yes Sir, I Can Boogie», which was instantly at the top of all music charts and loved by the audience. The first studio album that became platinum twice was released in 1977.