Faust Anne Imhof

Born to sing J. S. Bach, Anne Sofie von Otter brings elegant style, richness of voice, and career-long commitment to Baroque music to this glorious recording of alto and soprano arias she herself selected. Featuring beloved staples like the moving “Erbarme Dich” from the St. Matthew Passion and the “Agnus Dei” from the B minor Mass, this follow-up to her successful release of Music for a While includes lesser-known repertoire to entice the most jaded lover of voice, Baroque or Bach. Lars Ulrik Mortensen leads Concerto Copenhagen, the acclaimed Scandinavian Baroque ensemble, in instrumentations of fascinating variety unusual in Bach solo vocal albums

Since Offenbach is celebrated principally for the insatiable melodiousness and joie de vivre of his nearly 100 operettas, it is easy to overlook the fact that he started out as one of the finest cellists of his generation. Even in an age of super-virtuosos, his talent was such that at his peak he appeared in concert alongside the likes of Anton Rubinstein, Felix Mendelssohn and Joseph Joachim.

Eric Tanguy (born in1968) is among the most prolific and frequently performed French composers of his generation. Tanguy's music sounds very much like that of a large number of composers of a variety of nationalities who were old enough, when they came of age musically, to have absorbed serial techniques but were young enough to see that there was a world of other options for classical music gaining traction and respectability.

She's not shy, this Anne-Sofie von Otter. Her performances are, to say the least, incredibly expressive. Her Suleika I (D. 720) is Brigitte Bardot in Contempt. Her Im Abendrot (D. 799) is Kim Novak in Vertigo. Her Totengräbers Heimweh is Eli Walach in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Nor is von Otter dumb. Her interpretations are sly, subtle, and very, very sensitive. Her Der Wanderer an den Mond (D. 870) is hearty and lightly but profoundly philosophical.

Berg's Violin Concerto (1935) is considered by many the most accessible and emotionally engaging piece of music in the atonal idiom. His last completed work, the concerto was written as a memorial "to an angel" upon the premature death of Alma Mahler's daughter Manon Gropius. But as with all of Berg's oeuvre, an autobiography of the composer's inner life is also thoroughly woven into the score.

Anne Garner, Sheffield singer/songwriter, has released a remix album of her songs 'Re-Making The Pearl' on Irish label Psychonavigation Records. Remade/remodelled by DJ's, musicians and remixers such as Mixmaster Morris, Richard H Kirk, The Pylon King, Dean Honer, etc. Some are completely unrecognisable from their original incarnations, while others are reinterpreted in a more subtle way. Anne has been playing the piano since the age of 7 and is also classically trained on the flute. She got involved in the electronic music scene in her teens and joined the Sheffield band 'The Screaming Trees' (aka Count Zero, Success) in the late 80s, with releases such as 'Fracture in Time' (produced by former ABC's Stephen Singleton) and 'Count Zero' releases produced by Richard H Kirk.

French composers had taken little interest in the cello until the 1870s when three wonderful masterpieces were written. Orchestre National de Lyon led by Emmanuel Krivine accompanies the magnificent, Anne Gastinel in performances of cello works by Saint-Saëns, Lalo and Fauré. The vigour, elegance and charm of Saint-Saëns, the expressiveness, imagination and exotic touch of Lalo, the humanity, feeling and depth of Fauré: these three works sum up the spirit of French music.

A unique figure in British music, Anne Clark is a singer and lyricist who works in both electronic and acoustic music, performing literate but emotionally charged songs of contemporary life.
On her second LP, 1983's Changing Places, she began collaborating with keyboard player David Harrow, whose pulsating synthesizer work gave Clark's songs a compelling yet hard-edged electronic sheen that suited the often-alienated tone of her lyrics. Harrow's electronics would dominate many of Clark's best-known releases.