Michael Ernst – Excalibur, 2004

So this is where we find our hero in 2003. Dropped from his major label and absent his trademark flowing golden locks, Vintage presents his fans with yet another set of standout ballads and standards done only the way the Bolton can. Kicking out the jams early on with "The Very Thought of You," the tone is set right away for the album as a perfect musical accompaniment to a romantic dinner. The smooth, sultry tone is brought to a rousing climax with his re-interpretation of Etta James' classic "At Last." The fun continues onward with "Daddy's Little Girl," which was featured prominently in an ad campaign. Vintage closes with the potent but loaded question of "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?," a stunning finish to an album sure to appease even the most loyal of his fans.

When the Berliner “Funk-Stunde” (“Radio Hour”) went out on the air on October 29, 1923, heralding the start of German radio, the first piece of music to be broadcast live was Fritz Kreisler’s Andantino in the Style of Martini. The fact that the era of the new mass medium began with an imitation of an old musical style is not without a certain irony – and reveals how little attention had been paid to the problem of music on the radio. It was indeed to be a further five years before the radio stations commissioned the first compositions for the medium. Here, under the heading of “generic radio music”, the following genres were defined: “radio suite, musical radio play, radio cantata, radio opera and symphonic light music”. Modern composers such as Paul Hindemith, Ernst Toch and Kurt Weill were all commissioned, along with light entertainment composers such as Edmund Nick, Mischa Spoliansky and Eduard Künneke.

Most popular to theater audiences from his title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's version of The Phantom of the Opera, Michael Crawford was in fact a star of the British stage and screen for almost two decades before that. Born in Wiltshire, England, in 1942, he began singing in the school choir and, while still a teenager, changed his name from Dumble-Smith to the more charismatic Crawford and began working in radio, television, and film. After first stepping on the London stage in the early '60s, Crawford's first regular television series was the BBC's 1960s show Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life; he appeared in several films as well (The War Lover, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and a starring turn in How I Won the War, which also featured John Lennon).

BGO's two-fer reissue of Michael Chapman's most mysterious recording, Window from 1970, and its sequel, Wrecked Again, are two welcome reissues in the British singer/songwriter's CD catalog. Window is the great anomaly in Chapman's erratic, maverick career. The album was due to be recorded as a quick follow-up to the sensation that his debut, Fully Qualified Survivor, created on the British media scene. According to Marc Higgins' fine liner notes to this package, Chapman was supposed to record between touring dates. After a first demo and track session, Chapman went on tour, returning only to find that EMI had rushed 20,000 copies of the demo to print! Chapman himself warned fans off the record, telling them specifically not to buy it, but has performed songs from it in his live show continually for the last 30-plus years. The material is strong, and at this late date, nearly three and half decades after the fact, it sounds fresh. Immediacy, warmth, and the excitement of "first thought, best thought" are all over the set.

Liebe und Eifersucht (Love and Jealousy) is E. T. A. Hoffmann’s three act singspiel was regarded as lost for over 150 years until an edition of the score was uncovered in the German State Library in Berlin. CPO and the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival are proud to present the première recording of the work, now extant in the form originally intended by Hoffmann. Liebe und Eifersucht shows Hoffmann’s great love for Mozart and his profound knowledge of his music. Together with Undine this singspiel certainly ranks as this great romantic writer’s most important musical work.

Released shortly after the composer's 60th birthday, this album from The Zoo Duet presents works that deserve to be better known. Taking a line for a second walk is vintage Nyman, conceived originally as an orchestral work for Houston Ballet in 1966 and transcribed for two amplified pianos without any loss of its hypnotic intensity. Water Dances began life as music for Peter Greenaway's film Making A Splash and receives its premiere recording in its five-movement form on this disc. (Music Week)

Soprano Diana Damrau, dazzling in the operas of Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi and Richard Strauss, also has operetta in her blood. With this album she tours three capital cities of operetta – Vienna, Berlin and Paris – and covers nearly seven decades of musical history. En route she relishes the romance, wit and melodies of numbers by such composers Johann Strauss II, Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Robert Stolz, Paul Abraham, André Messager, Henri Christiné, Oscar Straus and Francis Lopez. Her star guest is tenor Jonas Kaufmann and conducting the Münchner Rundfunkorchester is Ernst Theis, as expert in operetta as he is in symphonic repertoire. “For me, operetta is the most all-embracing genre of music theatre,” says Damrau, “Its indulgence, its yearning, its joyousness and its comedy all touch the heart and show the positive side of life … It rarely fails to work its magic on audiences.”

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin continues its PENTATONE Mozart series with the composer’s 29th and 33rd symphonies. These works are coupled with his ravishingly beautiful Clarinet Concerto, performed by Ernst Schlader in the original edition for basset clarinet. Schlader, a specialist in historical instruments, has written an essay on the basset clarinet for the album booklet that includes a rare historical image showing the original shape of the instrument used in the years after the concerto’s premiere. The first release of this series was longlisted for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.