The Firemen of Viggiu

“My enthusiasm for Brahms goes back to my youth, and the piano concertos are largely responsible for it,” writes Sir András Schiff in a liner note for this remarkable new recording. It finds the great pianist reassessing interpretive approaches to Brahms in the inspired company of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. To fully bring out the characteristics of Brahms’s music Schiff’s choice of instrument is a Blüthner piano built in Leipzig around 1859, the year in which the D minor concerto was premiered.

In 1968, an ad from Frank Zappa in the L.A. Free Press read: “The Mothers of Invention cordially invite you to join them on Tuesday, July 23, 1968 when they will be taking over the Whisky a Go Go for 5 full hours of unprecedented merriment, which will be secretly recorded for an upcoming record album. Dress optional. Starting sometime in the evening. R.S.V.D.T.” That album ultimately ended up remaining mostly unheard, until now. The live collection Whisky a Go Go, 1968 is set to finally be released June 21st, 2024, via Zappa Records/UMe.

Jan Ladislav Dussek was perhaps Europe's greatest pianist until Beethoven came along, and much of his music involves the piano. He wrote works in many genres, however, including some substantial choral music at the end of his life that, in places, looked forward to Schubert. Consider this Messe Solemnelle in G major, an hourlong work that receives not only its world premiere recording but possibly its first performance in any form; it was discovered by Academy of Ancient Music director Richard Egarr in a Florence library. Physical CD buyers will get a weighty scholarly apparatus, but even online listeners will find an enjoyable work that could easily find its way into the choral repertory.

Imelda de'Lambertazzi (1830) was written just before Donizetti's first great international success, Anna Bolena, and it remains one of his many operas that has never made it into the repertoire. In his illuminating program notes, Jeremy Commons argues that Imelda was probably Donizetti's most forward-looking, even avant-garde opera; the composer was determined to create music that matched the demands of the drama, and therefore ignored many of the operatic conventions audiences had come to expect. It's no surprise, then, that it was badly received, and has rarely been revived.

A monster bit of funk that's unlike anything else we can think of! Their number 15 pop smash "Funky Nassau Part 1 & 2" is the cream of this hands-on production by the Bahamas natives. The nine cuts fuses island rhythms and American jazz/funk into a doable, choppy mixture featuring guitars, bass, drums, and scratch vocals. Misclassified as a disco band, the Beginning of the End served up breezy Phil Upchurch-esque sounds, with "Come Down" and "Surrey Ride" being prime examples.