Timothy Abbott & Arcana Mundi

In their debut recording for harmonia mundi, the young viola prodigy Timothy Ridout and his musical accomplice Frank Dupree celebrate the power of love, with selections from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, performed in Borisovsky’s popular arrangement, and with their own transcription of Schumann’s Dichterliebe. The voice of the heart and the soul of candour, here the viola displays an astonishing range of emotions and expressive colours – from boisterous to tender or introspective in the Prokofiev excerpts, while also mirroring the myriad nuances of Heine’s poems in Schumann’s sublime musical love letter to his Clara.

Lionel Tertis (1876-1975), a great genius of the viola, is little known to today’s public. Timothy Ridout pays tribute to this key figure in his instrument’s history with a flamboyant programme featuring music by Tertis’s friends, teachers and students alongside some of his own original works and transcriptions. A marvellous musical journey, rich in discoveries.

Lionel Tertis (1876-1975), a great genius of the viola, is little known to today's public. Timothy Ridout pays tribute to this key figure in his instrument's history with a flamboyant program featuring music by Tertis's friends, teachers and students alongside some of his own original works and transcriptions. A marvelous musical journey, rich in discoveries.

Lionel Tertis (1876-1975), a great genius of the viola, is little known to today's public. Timothy Ridout pays tribute to this key figure in his instrument's history with a flamboyant program featuring music by Tertis's friends, teachers and students alongside some of his own original works and transcriptions. A marvelous musical journey, rich in discoveries.

Timothy Ridout gives us the opportunity to discover the splendid viola version of Elgar’s famous Cello Concerto – an arrangement approved by the composer, who conducted its premiere in 1930. In addition to this deeply moving work, he gives us a powerful, poetic reading of Bloch’s all too rarely performed Suite for Viola and Orchestra, in which the Swiss composer indulged his fascination with the Orient.

This is the most recent release (2007) from Nevada's D'Arcana.This trio play a laid back, spacey brand of psychedelia with some heavier sections here and there. They've opened for both Rush and ZZ Top locally and apparently have had a fair amount of radio airplay down there as well. The cover art was done by Ed Unitsky who's also done the same for Porcupine Tree, The Flower Kings and The Tangent among others.

Os Mundi from Berlin became known because of their two LPs on Metronome and Brain. In 1975, when they had almost reached the period of breaking up, their guitarist Udo Arndt was doing a practical training in the studio of a broadcasting station and invited his friends there to make some free-of-charge recordings in order to practice. The recording sessions took place with changing line-ups, together with guest musicians, e. g. from Agitation Free. Some rather softened jazz-rock without vocals was played, which sounds very clean and has now been released for the first time. Additionally there are three other studio recordings on the CD and two RIAS tracks. This 2008 release of 'Sturmflut' (in English, that means Storm Tide) is a collection of the band's unreleased work, recorded between 1973-1975.

The idea for this CD developed during a recording of the Fantasy No. 7, and quickly established its own momentum. What began as a spontaneous thought experiment soon demanded fulfilment, and morphed swiftly into the desire to take part in the reawakening of this music. What followed was months of intensive dialogue with, and examination of, the 12 Fantasies by Telemann. Having first studied modern cello Renate Mundi discovered her passion for baroque music, and for the viola da gamba in particular. Her enthusiasm for the special characteristics of the instrument, as well as her interest in source studies, including the search for undiscovered scores, was fostered by Prof.