'L'Allegro il penseroso ed il moderato' brings together Sir David Willcocks, some fluent chamber players and the illustrious tenor Peter Pears - not the most orthodox of Handel interpreters in an era of so-called authentic performance, but here appropriately sonorous. The greater feast, however, is the 'Ode for St Cecelia', whose spiritual patronage of the sonic arts first really took off in the seventeenth century and has not looked back since. April Cantelo and Choir of King's College Cambridge offer an inspired and inspiring account of a rich, celebratory and gorgeously double-rhythmed delight.
The forthcoming David Bowie ‘era’ box set which covers most of the 1990s will be released in late November. Brilliant Adventures will be an 11CD box set or a 18LP vinyl box.
A daring wife disguises herself in order to be hired as a prison guard and thus rescue her unjustly detained husband: the story of Leonora, taken from the French novel by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, is familiar to us through Beethoven’s only opera.
This 3CD set contains all the FM Broadcast recordings made on the US leg of David Bowie s 1995 Outside tour, which featured then nu-industrial superstars Nine Inch Nails as support. With both artists trailing new, ground-breaking albums and - despite their generational differences - with their similarity of outlook and mutual respect, it was inevitable that a mix of the Bowie/NIN sound would ensue. So with each show including full sets from the Dame and his protgs, it was the mid-concert coming together of these two far reaching acts which stole the show night after night. Including concerts recorded at The Riverport Amphitheater, Maryland Heights, St Louis, MO, on 11th October 1995 and at The Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View, CA, on 21st October 1995, this set features the very best of one of the most challenging and futuristic tours of the past 30 years.
This 2CD set is a compilation of original field recordings made by David Attenborough between 1954 and 1963. He travelled to remote parts of the world to find and film exotic animals for the BBC television series Zoo Quest. But he was just as interested in the people he met and their music. Whenever he came across musicians, out came his early portable tape machine . "While I was theoretically looking for pythons, in the evenings I would record different types of music."