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Bach and other Baroque composers often transcribed their music for new instrumental combinations as needed under the press of a busy schedule, and performers like South African-born recorder player Stefan Temmingh have taken this fact as carte blanche to create arrangements of Bach's music as desired. You can make various arguments pro or con in connection with this practice, and the procedure here, going from keyboard works to ensemble pieces, is in some ways the most problematical. So what you think of Temmingh's disc may depend on where you come down on the larger question.

Not too long ago (a year or so) and while Axel Rudi Pell, was touring in support of his latest opus “Into the Storm”, the “25th Anniversary” of his came up and with it, the idea to celebrate the proceedings in a special way, so the stage was set, for a live performance at that years installation of “Bang Your Head” festival in Balingen/Germany, that was special and memorable for a variety of reasons. For the first time in absolutely ages, Axel, did perform a short four song set with his original band Steeler (not to be confused with the Ron Keel led American “Steeler” which also featured guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen) then a set that utilized as many of the studio singers as possible, was performed, with them, singing their “own” era’s material and finally a bunch of classic rock tracks were performed by the band enlisting the aid of some special guests/friends. All in all the whole show lasted for almost three hours and celebrated the long history of ARP, in the best way imaginable!

Rodolphe Kreutzer’s final three violin concertos are among his greatest achievements as a composer. While handling a Beethovenian orchestra with a craftsman’s sure touch, it is the purity and depth of tone, energetic fire and complete technical mastery required of the soloist that set these works among the most perfect examples of the French violin concerto. Axel Strauss, Professor of Violin at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and heard on concert stages worldwide, has been acclaimed ‘an excellent violinist who plays these with wit and verve’ (Limelight). Naxos plans to record all of Kreutzer’s violin concertos.