Chicago Chicago II

Solti in Chicago at his very best. The promising excitement in the first movement opens to a performance of drama and poetry… This is simply great conducting, great orchestral playing, captured in superbly recorded early digital engineering.

If not a definitive blues recording, this 16-track collection delivers on the promise of its title. James Cotton, Johnny Winter, Buddy Guy, Lonnie Mack, and the inestimable Professor Longhair rock the house like the veterans they are. The respected label also showcases relative newcomers, including Robert Cray and Little Charlie & the Nightcats, to show that blues has a future as well as a rich past.

Solti finds all the detail in the score not only in the very grand passages but brings tenderness to the more reflective sections which is a joy to listen too. The CSO are magnificent, the strings have that bloom that makes you think of the Vienna Philharmonic at their peak, the rest of the ensemble are no less perfect either. The Decca recording, which just predates digital sound, is full and opulent and puts you in the best seat in the concert hall and is as just as good, if not better, then many later recordings of these works.

This Solti performance is the perfect balance between classical structure and clarity with expressive warmth. … Perhaps I'd rather hear Judith Raskin or Margaret Price singing "Das himmlische Leben, but Kiri Te Kanawa is just fine in the end. … This is truly a great performance from beginning to end.

1999's Superharps was a great record featuring four top blues harmonica players. Two years later, Superharps II was an attempt to duplicate the success with four other harmonica wizards (in this case Carey Bell, Lazy Lester, Raful Neal, and Snooky Pryor). There are five individual features, eight songs that have two harmonicas, and a remake of the closing "Harp to Harp," which has all four harmonica players.