Fritz Reiner Conducts Richard Strauss The Complete Rca And Columbia Recordings

This fantastic compilation picks up the First period of his brilliant career as any other compilation never did it. Mercurial and epic pianism at its best. His Brahms - exultant and thundering - exceed his late readings with Jochum (less profound if you may, but much more expansive and less restrained). His reading about Shostakovich Sonata 2 is out of this world.

In his own words, Raymond Lewenthal was an octave thrower, long-distance arpeggioer and general producer of volcanic rumbles. This hugely talented, extroverted pianist was also a key figure in the revival of a great deal of 19th-century piano music, most of all that of Charles-Valentin Alkan. Sony Classicals new collection of Lewenthals complete recordings for RCA and Columbia Masterworks celebrates this maverick pianists recorded legacy, with three LPs of material specially remastered from the analogue tapes. Its release comes thirty years after Lewenthals death in November 1988. Both a showman and a scholar, Lewenthal was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1923, working as a child movie actor in Hollywood before beginning formal piano study at the age of 15.

Bill Withers: The Complete Sussex and Columbia Albums celebrates the timeless artistry of an American master. The set includes the nine albums that Bill released between 1971 through 1985…

Duke Ellington - Early Ellington: The Complete Brunswick and Vocalion Recordings 1926-1931 (1994) [3CD Set] {Decca Jazz}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 625 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 429 Mb
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© 1994 Decca Jazz / MCA / GRP | GRD-3-640
Jazz / Big Band / Early Jazz / Swing

Duke Ellington recorded for Brunswick from 1926 to 1931, the period in which his great talent and great orchestra first flowered, whether the band was recording under his own name or such pseudonyms as the Washingtonians or the Jungle Band. The earliest recordings are highlighted by the presence of trumpeter Bubber Miley and trombonist "Tricky Sam" Nanton, whose brilliant work with plunger mutes for vocal effects did much to define the early sound–which, in turn, rapidly evolved and expanded with the additions of Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges, and Cootie Williams. While the band's repertoire included many blues and popular songs, its distinctive identity emerges from early renditions of such trademark pieces as "East St. Louis Toodle-O," "Black and Tan Fantasy," "The Mooche," and "Mood Indigo." By the end of the period covered in this set, Ellington's ambitious later suites–some of them CD-length–are portended in the elegant extended composition "Creole Rhapsody," his clearly superior contribution to the symphonic jazz movement.

Fats Domino - I've Been Around: The Complete Imperial and ABC-Paramount Recordings (2019) {12CD Set, Bear Family BCD17579}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 4.11 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 1.67 Gb
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© 1948-65, 2015 Bear Family Records | BCD 17579
Early Rhythm & Blues / Rock & Roll / New Orleans R&B / Swamp-Pop / Piano Blues

We could have taken the easy way out. The original 1993 box set was out of stock. We could simply have printed more copies and filled orders. Of course, we didn’t. This is Bear Family Records and we don’t take shortcuts. We’ve invested more than 1000 hours in re-writing, recompiling and re-mastering this box. The brilliant engineering by Christian Zwarg will leave you shaking your head in admiration. You won’t quite recognize some of your favorite Fats Domino tracks because they’ve never sounded this good.

Ace does it again - of course. These two discs, The Complete Modern and Kent Recordings, contain every side that the young powerhouse Etta James cut for Modern, Crown, and Kent between 1955 and 1961. There are 42 cuts on these two discs, remastered and sequenced painstakingly according to release date. There are no less than seven previously unissued cuts, and two more that have appeared only on Ace compilations. (There's a killer alternate take of "Hey Henry" here that rivals the released version). Fans will have a lot of this material in various places, but this collection puts everything together in one slamming package. The first disc is comprised exclusively of sides recorded for Modern between '55 and '57…

Reiner's classic account of Tod & Verklärung is no doubt one of the most sublime and richly expressive versions on record, and can stand test of time, a kind of performance which never loses freshness. Each time you listen, there's something new to discover.