Richard Wilson

Following the critically acclaimed 'Jem Records Celebrates John Lennon', Jem artists have created a homage to Beach Boys' writer and leader Brian Wilson. 'Jem Records Celebrates Brian Wilson includes tracks by The Weeklings, The Grip Weeds, Nick Piunti, The Anderson Council, The Midnight Callers, Richard Barone, Johnathan Pushkar, and Lisa Mychols & Super 8. Sure to be on the list of Beach Boys fans and that of each Jem artist.

ABC Classics is proud to release a new live recording of highlights from Handel’s rarely heard opera Rodelinda, with legendary Australian conductor Richard Bonynge.
Rodelinda contains everything one would expect from a Handel opera: tangled love, jealousy, botched schemes, a joyous ending – and of course sublime music. Written in 1725, when Handel was at the height of his powers, it is truly a jewel in the crown of the Baroque repertoire.

Steven Wilson fans have been primed for The Future Bites since he released To the Bone in 2017. That record, and the preceding 4½ EP, were deliberately "pop" responses to his three-album dalliance with prog – Raven That Refused to Sing, Hand. Cannot. Erase, and Grace for Drowning. In contrast to the above, The Future Bites is a slick exercise in Wilson's oft-articulated love of synth pop and electronic music. It's a loose concept set about the treachery that rampant consumerism foists upon the world, and the danger a technological society imposes on personal identity…

Regarded as one of Europe’s leading horn players, Martin Owen appears as a soloist and chamber musician around the world. Currently principal horn at the BBC Symphony Orchestra, he has previously served as principal horn of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and as solo horn of the Berliner Philharmoniker. Weber’s Concertino was written for the old, valveless ‘natural horn’; its limited range of notes (tied to the harmonic series) was extended mechanically with additional tubing (‘crooks’) and, more artfully, by virtuoso players bending notes, and varied hand stopping. The technical demands of the Concertino are testament to the extraordinary facility of the hornists of the period.

Following their critically acclaimed album of English Music for Strings, Sinfonia of London and John Wilson turn to Germany and three outstanding works for string orchestra. Franz Schreker’s Intermezzo, the oldest piece here, was composed in 1900, before Schreker’s rise to fame in the opera houses of Germany and Austria, but shows strong indications of what was to follow. Korngold composed the Symphonische Serenade following his return to Vienna from Hollywood after the Second World War, and shortly before he wrote his Symphony in F sharp. Korngold effortlessly conjures a vivid range of colours and textures from his large forces (32 violins, 12 violas, 12 cellos, and 8 basses) in a work that explores the virtuosity of the players to the full. Composed in 1945, as a reaction to the horrors of the war, and the desecration of German culture, Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings seems to look backwards to the German romantic tradition (a trait even more evident in his Four Last Songs, of 1948). The moving final passage, marked ‘In Memoriam’, leaves the listener to contemplate in silence.

Cassandra Wilson continues to move down a highly eclectic path on Belly of the Sun, the somewhat belated follow-up to Traveling Miles. While displaying a jazz singer's mastery of melodic nuance and improvisatory phrasing, Wilson draws on a variety of non-jazz idioms – roots music, rock, Delta blues, country, soul – to create a kind of earthy, intelligent pop with obvious crossover appeal. Her core band includes guitarists Marvin Sewell and Kevin Breit, who blend marvelously, Sewell mostly on mellow acoustic and Breit adding atmospheric touches on electric, 12-string, and slide guitars, as well as mandolin, banjo, and even bouzouki.