Concerto For my Love

If you are only sampling Ravi then you may want to buy the "West Meets East" Album. This makes a good second, yet it is still worthy of five stars. The mixture of eastern instruments and western structure show up in this album. This is as much Andre Previn as it is Ravi. It is soothing yet carries a predictable tune. Many hybrids as these pieces carry the plus from both cultures. And Ravi does an excellent job of bridging. If you are a purist then you may want to pass over this album. Personally, I could keep it on continuous play.

Violinist Joshua Bell and cellist Steven Isserlis are joined by two acclaimed musical forces - pianist Jeremy Denk and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, of which Bell is Music Director – in a landmark joint recording, For the Love of Brahms (Sony Classical). Available September 30, 2016, the new album is a unique project that features works of Brahms and Schumann that Bell calls “music about love and friendship.” Bell, Isserlis and Denk unite here in Brahms’s first published chamber work, the Piano Trio in B Major, Op. 8 in its rarely performed original 1854 version. Isserlis also joins Bell – as violin soloist and director – and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in Brahms’s last orchestral work, the celebrated Double Concerto (for Violin and Cello) in A Minor, Op. 102. Bell, Isserlis and members of the Academy also offer the first recording of an unusual coupling: the slow movement of Schumann’s rarely heard Violin Concerto, in a version for string orchestra made by Benjamin Britten, who also added a short coda.

From the time I first heard Ludwig Thuille's masterly Sextet for Piano and Winds in B-flat Major, Op. 6, thirty years ago, I have wanted to hear more music by this sadly neglected composer, a more traditionalist friend of Richard Strauss. Apart from a meager handful of recordings (quickly out of print) of the Sextet, though, for years nothing else was available. I read that Thuille, apart from large vocal works, and a good deal of chamber music, had written one symphony, the Symphony in F, and at least one piano concerto, and have been watching eagerly over the years, hoping that someone would finally commit them to disc. And at last!

Saul is one of Handel's most action-filled, fast-moving oratorios; an opera in everything but name only. It has been lucky on disc–both Paul McCreesh (Archiv) and John Eliot Gardiner (Philips) have led superb readings, and Joachim Carlos Martini leads a good performance on Naxos, which is a bargain. Now René Jacobs and his remarkable Concerto Köln come along and offer a truly majestic reading, filled with real drama and beautiful, precise singing and playing. Tenor Jeremy Ovenden sings Jonathan with nobility and faces down Saul in Act II with style and power. David is sung by countertenor Lawrence Zazzo, and he's as good as the best-recorded competition (Andreas Scholl, Derek Lee Ragin). Emma Bell is ravishing as Merab; Rosemary Joshua makes a fine Joshua.

Is violinist Julia Fischer in the same league as David Oistrakh in her recording of Brahms' Violin Concerto? Are Fischer and cellist Daniel Müller-Schott in the same league as Oistrakh and Mstislav Rostropovich in their recording of Brahms' Double Concerto? No: Oistrakh and Rostropovich are playing big, muscular, and heroic music while Fischer and Müller-Schott are playing intimate, sensuous, and lyrical music. Fischer's tone is lovely, her technique is impeccable, but best of all his interpretation of the Violin Concerto is sweet, smiling, and joy-filled. Müller-Schott's tone is warm, his technique is impressive, but best of all his interpretation of the Double Concerto with Fischer sounds like a love duet from an Othello written by a German.

Bobby Byrd - Help For My Brother: The Pre-Funk Singles 1963-68 (2017) {BGP CDBGPD309}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 281 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 153 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 29 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1963-68, 2017 BGP Records / Ace Records | CDBGPD309
R&B / Funk / Soul / Boogaloo / Deep Funk

The R&B, soul and boogaloo sounds that make up the singles recorded by James Brown’s right-hand man. Together on CD for the first time. Without Bobby Byrd there would have been no James Brown, whose whole career stems from the moment he crashed into Byrd at a community baseball match in Toccoa, Georgia in 1953. Brown was an inmate of the Alto Reform School, a converted National Guard Armoury in the north of the state. Byrd’s family helped secure Brown’s release, and Byrd then let the youngster join his vocal group.

Lilting melodies and exhilarating dance rhythms; gentle pathos, brooding drama and robust high spirits; the spirit of rural Bohemia and the sophistication of Prague, Vienna, New York and London in the late 19th century: Antonin Dvořák’s music is unfailingly distinctive and captivating. In all his works – from the epic ‘New World’ Symphony and Cello Concerto to the irresistible Slavonic Dances, haunting ‘American’ String Quartet, quirky violin Humoresque and yearning Song to the Moon – he is a composer whose heart is open and generous, and whose love for his homeland always shines through. This box provides an illuminating and enriching survey of his works, including his complete symphonies. A number of the celebrated performers have Slavonic roots themselves; all their interpretations draw on a deep affinity with Dvořák’s inspiration and humanity.