Vna 75

Following their ICMA award-nominated first album on Resonus (A Courtly Garland for Baroque Trumpet), period ensemble Orpheus Britannicus, with director Andrew Arthur, joins with The Chapel Choir of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and viol consort Newe Vialles for an impelling new recording of Buxtehude’s seminal and ground-breaking cycle of cantatas Membra Jesu nostri, BuxWV 75. With a distinguished lineup of soloists complementing this magnum opus, Arthur and his musicians give a gripping account of one of the most significant of early-Baroque oratorios.

With this surround-sound recording of Berlioz’s Requiem, Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra tackle the infinite and the immeasurable.All the grandiose, striking beauty of the Requiem’s large-scale ceremonial is encapsulated by first-class vocal and orchestral forces, fully utilising the spatial possibilities of Grieghallen in Bergen. The matching of space and sonority was one of Berlioz’s lasting obsessions, one experience in St Paul’s Cathedral in London throwing Berlioz into a delirium of emotion from which he took days to recover. His Grande Messe des morts, notorious for its requirement of four brass bands in addition to a large orchestra and chorus, taken here from live concerts, has often been seen as one of the most emotionally powerful works of its kind. Setting a solemn and austere, even ascetic text, the music is not that of an orthodox believer but of a visionary, inspired by the dramatic implications of death and judgement.

Filmed at The Summit in Houston, Texas on November 20th 1975, this film captures a typically incendiary live performance by The Who at the start of the US leg of their tour in support of The Who By Numbers album which had been released earlier that year…

Doug Parkinson has rarely gone unnoticed - for his voice, his physique, his very presence. From the moment he appeared as a serious participant in Australian popular music in 1966 he commanded attention. Thirty years later he is a true household name - known as one of the great distinctive Oz Rock voices and musical mainstays. In And Out Of Focus 1966-75 kicks off with three tracks by the Questions, Doug's first hit band - 'Sally Go 'Round The Roses' (a Top 15 Sydney hit), 'Hey Gyp' & 'And Things Unsaid'…