History For The Classical Child

To be still at the forefront of progressive rock over forty years since their inception in 1974 The Enid are the definition of ‘enduring’ as is their popularity with their fanbase of enthusiastic supporters…

Music lovers in the US can be forgiven for wondering whether Canada has ever produced any important composers, since very little Canadian music is heard down here. This disc provide a small sample of what is actually a large body of significant work waiting to be discovered.
First of all, don't be misled by the "chamber orchestra" designation here: these are all big, extroverted pieces in which sonic spectacle plays a big part. Andrew MacDonald's Violin Concerto is in the 19th-Century virtuoso tradition, pitting the soloist against a busy, brass- and percussion-laden orchestra in a real stamina contest. The solo part sounds flatly impossible, but hearing is believing–thanks to Lord knows how much ………

Fred Granlund @ Amazon.com

The 40th Anniversary edition of Jethro Tull’s Minstrel In The Gallery. Original album plus seven bonus tracks (six previously unreleased) and all to stereo by Steven Wilson. The album has been expanded to include the b-side Summerday Sands, several studio outtakes, and alternate session material recorded for a BBC broadcast. The second disc features a live recording of Jethro Tull performing at the Olympia in Paris on July 5, 1975, a few months prior to the release of Minstrel In The Gallery. During the show, the band played songs from several of its albums, including War Child and Aqualung, as well as an early performance of Minstrel In The Gallery.
Minstrel in the Gallery was Tull's most artistically successful and elaborately produced album since Thick as a Brick and harked back to that album with the inclusion of a 17-minute extended piece ("Baker Street Muse")…

This edition of Handel’s Messiah is a landmark recording both for the Academy and in the history of the work, being both the first recording made with the Academy’s own chorus, and the first (and as far as we are aware, only) recording of the version used by Handel for the work’s 1743 London premiere. Sir Neville Marriner’s deliberate choice to break with the massed-choir treatments of the past was greeted enthusiastically by the public, selling over a quarter of a million copies in the first three years, and leading Fanfare’s Michael Carter to remark in 2010: “There have been many recordings of Messiah since this 1976 release and there will no doubt be many more to come, but few, if any, will match, let alone surpass, this of Marriner.”