L'iniziazione (1999)

The Complete Works for Flute and Clarinet: In both original works and transcriptions, the Ebony Duo explores Scelsi’s use of special sound colors and his coloring of sound. Transcriptions especially prepared by the clarinetist (and pianist) Michael Raster provide the basis for some of the works on the present album. Yet Scelsi’s original intentions incurred no damage as a result of this recrafting. To the contrary! “The formidable technical demands that playing on two strings with in part opposite dynamics places on the solo violinist certainly justify an adaptation for two instrumentalists – all the more so as Scelsi himself had already been concerned with the “third dimension”, the depth of sound, in connection wind instruments before, especially in the piece Ko-Lho for flute and clarinet.”

This two-CD, 40-song set includes both sides of all 20 of the singles released by Johnny Cash on Sun through 1964. (Even though Cash left the label in 1958, Sun plundered its vaults for more Cash singles for about five years, with some of the 45s doing quite well on the country charts and denting the lower reaches of the pop ones.) This is really an excuse for a compilation that's more comprehensive than the usual greatest-hits set, but more affordable and digestible than the box sets of his Sun stuff. There's nothing wrong with that, either. It's well-packaged, the music is good to classic, and it's an excellent compromise for listeners who want a lot of Johnny Cash at Sun, but not everything.

This 24-CD box, which dwarfs even most Bear Family sets in scope, is essentially everything Ellington cut for RCA-Victor over a 46-year period. There are gaps, especially after 1946 when he jumped to Columbia, but otherwise, this is all of it. One quickly discovers that, by virtue of its leader's taste, combined with the good sense of RCA-Victor's recording managers, this was a band that did little, if any, wrong on record…