Dramatis

Composer Anthony Cheung releases All Roads, a follow up to FCR215 Cycles and Arrows. Featuring performances by the Escher Quartet, violinist Miranda Cuckson, soprano Paulina Swierczek, and pianists Jacob Greenberg, Gilles Vonsattel, and Cheung himself, All Roads encapsulates Cheung's penchant for drawing on broad sources of inspiration and filtering them through an incisive and discriminating compositional process to produce substantial, structurally airtight works.

In the spring of 1973, ORTF decided to organise a concert performance of Aida with an international cast (Lavirgen from Spain, Pappas from Greece, the Italians Alberti and Roni, etc.). Sanzogno was felt to be the ideal conductor. The first-night gossip concerned above all the opera's protagonist, a black soprano from America's deep south (Augusta, Georgia, to be precise). Michele Selvini.

This recording provides us with the opportunity to hear an opera that has been infrequently performed in this century. The performance also marks an early collaboration of José Carreras and Katia Ricciarelli, two of the biggest "young stars" of their generation. Kendall Clark.

Miss Sutherland has always been stimulated to special efforts when Miss Horne is working with her, and those two women provide a team unique in the bel canto literature as practiced today. Harold C. Schonberg, New York Times, 5.III.1970.

When Montserrat Caballé sang her first aria, "Com'è bello", there was a perceptible change in atmosphere. It seemed for a moment that everyone had stopped breathing. What registered, of course, was an acute awareness that there was singing of a most unusual sort. It had , to put it simply, the quality of greatness […]. What emanates from Caballé's throat can best be described as total purity - purity in the sense of majestic power and natural expresiveness. John Gruen, Herald Tribune, about the debut of Caballé as Lucrezia Borgia, Carnegie Hall, 1965.

This is a 1975 concert version conducted by Eve Queler, with the Orchestra of the New York City Opera and the Brooklyn College Chorus and an absolute dream cast. As Leonora, mezzo Shirley Verrett (before she went up to soprano) just shines with a richness of tone and dramatic conviction that has to be heard to be believed. Steven Muni, Amazon.com.

'The Early Years 1965 1972' is a comprehensive 28-disc box set that sees Pink Floyd delve into their vast music archive to produce a deluxe package that includes 7 individual book-style volumes, featuring much previously unreleased material. The Early Years box set contains unreleased tracks, BBC Radio Sessions, remixes, outtakes, and alternative versions over an incredible 11 hours, 45 mins of audio (made up of 130+ tracks), live and TV performance in over 14 hours of audio-visual material.

Most of us come to the Saint John Passion knowing the Saint Matthew Passion first. The bigger and more elaborate Saint Matthew, which came along three, or possibly five years later (there is controversy about the date), has tended to cast a shadow in which the earlier work is swallowed up, and this has been so ever since Mendelssohn's Saint Matthew performance in 1829 marked the beginning of the public rediscovery of J.S. Bach. (The professionals had never forgotten.) But if the Saint John is smaller in scale than the Saint Matthew, it is hardly the lesser work in quality, though it would of course be silly to claim that the master of the Saint Matthew Passion had not learned from the experience of setting Saint John. But the most interesting differences between these two towering attestations of faith are differences in intention. Read Matthew 26-27, Mark 14-15, Luke 22-23, and John 18-19, and you get four tellings of the last days in the life of Jesus that differ in tone, emphasis, and detail…

Prog/Folk/Rock from the Murky depths of Cumbria. Aided by a merry band of misfits, Gandalf's Fist are your new favourite Cult band waiting to be discovered! Gandalf's Fist draw on their mutual love for classic rock bands such as Pink Floyd, The Who, and even the likes of Iron Maiden. Gandalf's Fist is a British band from Maryport, Cumbria. Their music is influenced by 1970s progressive/psychedelic rock. The group formed in 2005, and built their reputation through various airplay by national radio with the help of several interviews in the "Classic Rock presents Prog"- Magazine, they cemented their reputation by playing at the "Second Stage" of Planet Rockstock in Great Yarmouth in December 2013, despite being a "initially studio only" project. They were featured in the TOP20 of Geoff Barton's 2013 Critic's choice in PROG Magazine Issue #41 lately.