Treasures of Irish Music

Today, with the amount of recordings aimed at rediscovering the buried treasures of past centuries, it is difficult to ignore the work of Rebecca Clarke. Viola player Vinciane Béranger, along with Dana Ciocarlie, Hélène Collerette and David Louwerse, have devoted a recording to the Clarke's works for viola. Both a composer and a performer, Clarke was one of the foremost professional women in England. Her music, at the crossroads of various currents, navigates at different moments through French music, modality, British folklore, harmonic boldness and exoticism. There is, however, no pastiche: Clarke creates her own honey from these trends in order to construct a quite atypical language that is resolutely modern. From her masterly Viola Sonata to the poetic Morpheus, and not forgetting the trio Dumka or the duet Chinese Puzzle, the performers are keen to paint the musical portrait of this iconoclastic composer. The recording is enhanced with the world premiere of Irish Melody, a long lost score that was recently rediscovered.

This release features a collection of what might be called piano orphans: commercial and non-commercial recordings of great pianists that simply have never found their way onto compact disc. Among these treasures are fifteen minutes of Dinu Lipatti playing Scarlatti and Brahms that have only recently surfaced; an unpublished disc of Alfred Cortot playing the “Russian Dance” from Petroushka; and previously unpublished excerpts of the Tchaikovsky first piano concerto played by Vladimir Horowitz with the Philadelphia Orchestra, recorded during a 1932 concert conducted by Fritz Reiner and recorded as an experiment by the Bell Telephone Laboratory. This is Horowitz's earliest known concert performance and is in amazing sound for that time. It is unfortunate that the entire concerto was not recorded, but hearing these excerpts will be a revelation for Horowitz fans. Also included are live concerto performances by Lev Puishnov and Guiomar Novaes. We feel certain that piano enthusiasts worldwide will treasure this 2-CD set as nothing like it has been heard since Gregor Benko produced his acclaimed Landmarks of Recorded Pianism LP forty years ago.

Tempest has a band name that might suggest a group of sneering, leather-wearing, head-banging metal heads, but the group's music is less threatening and more expansive than its name suggests. Tempest plays traditional Celtic music with a rock & roll intensity that's accented by a wide range of influences from the blues to American country music, Cajun 2-steps, and Arabic music, with some old-time San Francisco psychedelic flair…

LIMITED EDITION CD BOX SET A chronicle of rare & unreleased studio, radio & live recordings. Almost four hours of music. Includes booklet with color photos, track history and more!

Davy Graham - From Monkhouse to Medway 1963-1973 (2010) {Hux Records HUX 113}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 416 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 186 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 25 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1963-73, 2010 Hux Records | HUX 113
Folk / Jazz / Blues / Celtic / Progressive Folk / Guitar / Acoustic

Leave it to Hux to uncover hidden treasures. This 21-cut collection by guitar legend Davy Graham is just such an item. Best-known in America for Paul Simon's cover of Graham's instrumental "Angi” on Sounds of Silence, he was, in British folk circles, the undisputed guv’nor of the acoustic guitar by his peers and aficionados who included John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, Jimmy Page, Michael Chapman, and Roy Harper – all of whom were two to four years his junior, and held him in absolute reverence for his grasp of blues, jazz, classical, and Eastern modes. The music included here was compiled and annotated with a wonderful essay by Colin Harper, who offers convincing evidence for even the most cynically minded listener that Graham was a guitar god.

The Collector's Edition - Celebrating a groundbreaking label - The true legacy of a legendary label. Long hailed as an audiophile's label, Mercury represents an important milestone in the history of classical recordings. A s The New York Times described, 'One feels oneself in the living presence of the orchestra'. 60 years after the landmark first recording, Mercury Living Presence: The Collector's Edition celebrates this special anniversary.

Imagine the cave where music was born. In the introduction to their 9th studio album "HUMAN. II: NATURE.", NIGHTWISH take us all the way back to this ancient place and time when bashing rocks became rhythm and voice turned into harmonies. In the course of the millennia, this amazing cultural achievement evolved via Bach and Beethoven into blues, rock and heavy metal – a mental journey that the Finns trace in their upcoming full-length’s first song, ‘Music’.

This 53-CD set is more than the sum of its parts. While not all the performances and recordings are top-notch, the overall quality is very high and as a historical overview of a label known for its sonic as well as musical merits, it's full of treasures. The Mercury sound at its best is vivid and still sounds remarkable and many of these recordings - such as the marches, show tunes and orchestral showpieces conducted by Frederic Fennell - demonstrate this amply. But it's not all lollipops by any means.

The premier purveyors of Ibiza comedown have selected two dozen tracks of laid-back, cozily experimental music to help celebrate their 20th anniversary, and while it at times feels ungainly, it never seems too scripted. The first disc has Amalagation of Soundz creating a rustic drum'n'bass mantra ("Enchant Me"), Moodrama mixing tribal beats with flitters of jazz (the appropriately titled "Jazz Tip"), and even Deep & Wide constructing a gorgeously subtle native twinkle along the lines of Dario G's "Voices." The other disc tends to go for the more celestial (Jean Michel Jarre, Jon & Vangelis) or the post-sunset reawakening (Foundland, Christian Alvad), but begins to sag with the drugged-out self-importance of a born-again hippy. Luckily, with so many tracks on offer, it's easy to sift out the treasures. This is a fine, calming collection of indigenous, open-door attitude.

This 53-CD set is more than the sum of its parts. While not all the performances and recordings are top-notch, the overall quality is very high and as a historical overview of a label known for its sonic as well as musical merits, it's full of treasures. The Mercury sound at its best is vivid and still sounds remarkable and many of these recordings - such as the marches, show tunes and orchestral showpieces conducted by Frederic Fennell - demonstrate this amply. But it's not all lollipops by any means.