Europa (1991)

Il comunismo conobbe una formidabile espansione nella prima metà del secolo scorso e subí un tracollo vertiginoso nella seconda metà. La nascita dello Stato sovietico e del movimento comunista ebbe un enorme impatto internazionale tramite la promessa o la minaccia di una rivoluzione mondiale. Quello scenario sembrò ancora piú incombente all'indomani della Seconda guerra mondiale. …

No Baroque work is more familiar than Vivaldi's set of four programmatic violin concertos known as the Four Seasons, yet firebrand Italian violinist Fabio Biondi and his Europa Galante will make you feel as though you're hearing them for the first time in this recording, originally released on the Opus 111 label. Biondi's tempi are fast indeed in the outer movements, and he pushes some of Vivaldi's illustrative episodes into a realm of crescendi and descrescendi that's mighty unusual. And he ornaments the music freely. But his expressive devices are never Romantic – they come off as full-blooded, passionate responses to the music, and they never seem to violate the spirit.

In età moderna gli europei conquistarono, e persero poi, l'intero pianeta, non prima di averlo trasformato irreversibilmente, e avergli trasmesso alcuni dei loro valori fondamentali, che furono anche le armi di quella conquista, e cioè il capitalismo, lo Stato complesso e il pluralismo. Armi e caratteri che definiscono le società europee come generalmente più flessibili di altre. Partendo da questa constatazione Paolo Viola sviluppa alcune considerazioni. …

During the mid-'70s, Germany's Kraftwerk established the sonic blueprint followed by an extraordinary number of artists in the decades to come. From the British new romantic movement to hip-hop to techno, the group's self-described "robot pop" – hypnotically minimal, obliquely rhythmic music performed solely via electronic means – resonates in virtually every new development to impact the contemporary pop scene of the late- 20th century, and as pioneers of the electronic music form, their enduring influence cannot be overstated…

Roadrunner Records celebrates the legacies of some of our most revered artists by releasing multi-disc boxsets, each including every album the band recorded for Roadrunner. Sets, feature each album in an individual CD paper-sleeve with original artwork, housed in a clamshell box. The albums are neatly packaged together in one place, giving the listener a blistering slice of metal history, and an in-depth look at each band's evolution.