R A Jones

Filmed in 1979, this delightful staging by Otto Schenk features outstanding singer-actresses Gwyneth Jones, Brigitte Fassbaender and Lucia Popp. Der Rosenkavalier is Richard Strauss’s most popular opera and the greatest comic opera since Mozart. Premiered just three years before the start of the First World War, the opera traces the artistic heritage of the Austrian-Hungarian empire in the days of Mozart, where the story is set, to the morbid distraction of the Viennese Art Nouveau.

After the critical (and commercial) success of her debut two years earlier, Rickie Lee Jones had a lot riding on her sophomore album, Pirates. From the opening track, "We Belong Together," Jones served notice that she was willing to challenge herself and experiment with more unusual, complex song structures…

Booker T. Jones was one of the architects of the Memphis soul sound of the 1960s as the leader of Booker T. & the MG's, who scored a number of hits on their own as well as serving as the Stax Records house band. But Jones' accomplishments don't stop there, and as a producer, songwriter, arranger, and instrumentalist, he's worked with a remarkable variety of artists, from Willie Nelson and John Lee Hooker to Soul Asylum to the Roots.

This version of Holst’s endearing masterpiece, “The Planets”, sounds very good in Naxos’ super audio 5.1 technology. I do not have the point one (subwoofer) hooked up in my house and assume, by listening to the recording in 5.0, that the timpani — which are already very powerful and forward placed — would be explosive if you listened in 5.1. The sound is very good otherwise, with wide ranging and natural orchestral body and timbre. It is not the best super audio sound I’ve heard but it is good and a big improvement over the stereo sound on the last version of “The Planets” I purchased, the one Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle released last year.