The Change Jan Komasa

The Complete Jan Akkerman is a new 26 CD box set which brings together all the studio albums (and more) of Dutch guitar legend Jan Akkerman, who found international success with the band Focus. The creative guitarist is well known for his individualistic style, combining rock, jazz, blues, and baroque into his solo projects. This 26-disc set includes the solo studio long-players, his most important live recordings and a CD of rare and previously unreleased tracks.
The booklet includes a biography, some unpublished photos and an album-to-album breakdown, featuring full credits (including never-before-published facts about who played what on specific albums) and Jan’s own memories about the 23 studio and live albums, taken from recent interviews with Jan…

Schubert composed his first five symphonies while still a teenager, but they represent just one facet of his prodigious fluency. At this time some of his musical ideas bear a family resemblance to certain themes from Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, but already his own musical character is evident. He began his Second Symphony in December 1814 and had finished it by March 24th of the following year. He completed the Fourth Symphony in about three to four weeks during April 1816. We should not read too much into the Fourth Symphonys Tragic appendage, added by Schubert as an afterthought. It may be merely an example of the flippant comments which he wrote on some of his youthful scores, but nevertheless the symphony has more gravitas than its predecessors. Schubert also includes a second pair of horns to enrich the texture. Actually, this is the only piece of non-programmatic music to which he gave a descriptive title. After completing the symphonic cycles of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, Jan Willem de Vriend now undertakes Schuberts complete symphonic output. This is the first volume in that series.

Schubert’s musical ideas at this time sometimes bear a family resemblance to themes by Mozart, Haydn or Beethoven, but nevertheless his own style was already precociously developed. One would not mistake his Fifth Symphony of 1816 for the work of any other composer, though its difference in character from the Fourth Symphony is equally striking. Here, omitting clarinets, trumpets or timpani, Schubert uses a reduced orchestration in comparison with his previous symphonies.