The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win The Vote

The Psychedelic Ensemble is a one-man band who chose to remain anonymous, allegedly led by someone who has been working with some great names of the music scene since the Seventies. Intriguing, to say the least! "The Art Of Madness" (2009) is a 55 minute continuous cycle of songs, each based on a different manifestation of madness. In a vein not unlike Pink Floyd, the music tells the story of an ordinary man who, without warning, experiences a psychotic Ecstasy. Those who love concept albums, find pleasure in songs lasting for an hour and have a soft spot for late 70's Pink Floyd should make up the perfect audience for this album…

The Rolling Stones’ 1981 tour was the biggest rock and roll event of the year. The size of the production, the length and the pubulicity surrounding it were unprecedented. They played in the biggest arenas, sometimes for multiple nights, and orchestrated a media blitz which saw them appear on television somewhere in the world at least once a week on local stations, syndicated shows like Rona Barrett’s new news program “Inside & Out” and on cable television with several appearances on the brand new channel MTV. The big tour finale was the pay-per-view broadcast by satellite on the final night…

This first of the two sets contains four indisputable masterpieces. In the stormy D minor Concerto K. 466, Brendel springs a mild surprise by playing his own cadenzas rather than Beethoven's, the ones most often used. I must confess to preferring Beethoven's unstylish but dramatic and imaginative cadenza to the first movement, but otherwise the performance is beyond reproach. Brendel adds some discreet and entirely appropriate ornamentation to the many repetitions of the second movement's main theme. The Olympian C major K. 467, with its incomparably beautiful slow movement, also receives some much-needed decoration: here the cadenzas are by Radu Lupu and are a bit quirkier than necessary.