Need For Speed (2014)

As part of The Stranglers' celebration of their Ruby Anniversary, the definitive collection of the B-side recordings they made whilst signed to Epic is released for the first time, via their own label. Appropriately, as befits a band marking forty years together, Here & There: The Epic B-sides Collection 1983-1991 gathers 40 tracks across 2 CDs and is also released as a 40 track digital package. The Stranglers released no less than 13 singles in the UK during this period, which saw them produce five albums: four studio and one live. The Stranglers signed to Epic Records in 1982 having been with United Artists / Liberty since 1977. The change of label coincided with changes in marketing policy across the UK industry - often dubbed "the Frankie Goes to Hollywood effect". Previously, The Stranglers' had released only one 12" single - an extended version of Bear Cage in 1980 - but from 2nd Epic single, Midnight Summer Dream until 1990, each release had a 12" version which required extra studio or, increasingly, live tracks to "add value" to the package.

The composer, pianist and teacher Eduard Aslanovich Abramian was one of the most significant and respected figures in the development of modern Armenian music. Drawing on features of Armenian folklore, Abramian’s impressive 24 Preludes do not follow a highly structured tonal scheme but one which appears to be spontaneous, key following key principally to satisfy the need for dramatic contrast of mood and colour…

Antonio Mazzoni was a fairly prolific Italian composer in the middle and late 18th century (1717–1785), and he Read more Antigono for the opening season of one of the world’s shortest-lived opera houses: the Ópera do Tejo in Lisbon. It opened on March 31, 1755, and was destroyed seven months later by an earthquake. (Its site is now a navy dockyard.) The libretto is by the famed Metastasio, and Mazzoni was clearly considered an important figure in his time. Metastasio wrote the librettos of the only three serious operas performed in the seven months of life for the opera house in Lisbon, and the choice of Mazzoni to write the music for one of them demonstrates his reputation at the time. He wrote perhaps 19 operas (we aren’t sure), many of which have not survived. Antigono is performed here in a critical edition edited by Nicholas McNayr.

If you’ve not previously heard of the Sitkovetsky Trio, it’s because this is the ensemble’s recording debut. Formed in 2007 by three young musicians who met at Menuhin School in England, the group won first prize at the International Commerzbank Chamber Music Award just one year later, and then the NORDMETALL Chamber Music Award at the Mecklenburg Vorpommern Festival one year after that in 2009.