Decca Tango

Legendary Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire celebrates his 75th birthday with a new album, a delightful collection of personal piano favourites. The new record, ‘Encores’, contains 30 tracks ranging from Purcell to Rachmaninov; Scarlatti to Shostakovich and 12 of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces. It also includes such treasures as the Sgambati Mélodie de Gluck, Paderewski’s Nocturne and Albéniz’s Navarra. An exclusive Decca artist since 2002, Nelson Freire won the 2006 Gramophone Recording of the Year and the Latin Grammy for Best Classical Album in 2013.

André Léon Marie Nicolas Rieu (born 1 October 1949) is a Dutch violinist and conductor best known for creating the waltz-playing Johann Strauss Orchestra. Together they have turned classical and waltz music into a worldwide concert touring act, as successful as some of the biggest global pop and rock music acts.

The long-awaited solo album from Decca’s star cellist sees Weilerstein revealing and revelling in her technique. The American cellist has attracted widespread attention worldwide for her combination of natural virtuosic command and technical precision with impassioned musicianship. The intensity of her playing has regularly been lauded, as has the spontaneity and sensitivity of her interpretations. Committed to expanding the cello repertoire, Alisa is a fervent champion of new music and this release is her first solo album.

Stefan Wolpe - Entartete Musik: Zeus Und Elida (2000)
Avant-Garde, Contemporary Classical | EAC (FLACs) NO LOG, NO SCANS | 0:57:58 | 262 MB
Filefactory | Decca | (7z) | Released 2000

For listeners who can't imagine a halfway point between Schoenberg and Satie-or perhaps a tenfold multiplication of Kurt Weill's biting irony and sardonic use of jazz-these short operas by Stefan Wolpe will come as a revelation. Influenced in equal parts by socialism, serialism and Dada, Wolpe's 1928 stage works have been long forgotten, or in the case of 'Zeus und Elida,' never performed at all until 1997.
In 'Zeus,' the Greek god descends upon Berlin's bustling Potsdamer Platz-a location of modern urban life brilliantly and chaotically evoked by Wolpe. Zeus is understandably confused; after singing a Tango, he searches for his beloved Europa but finds a prostitute instead, only to wind up arrested for, among other things, impersonating a god.
'Schöne Geschichten' is even more unconventional: seven "pretty stories" (actually scathing jokes), accompanied by the highly complex and atonal music of an eight-piece jazz ensemble. Taking on science, religion, justice, culture, love, philosophy and patriotism, Wolpe dramatizes gaps in communication and points out the ways in which society fails to live up to its high ideals. The satirical diction used by the singers in this work should be apparent even to non-German speakers, and the Ebony Band brings impressive accuracy to the music, equal parts swing and sting. Once again, Decca/London's 'Entartete Musik' series has done a marvelous job recovering a slice of 20th-century musical history.

On 11 October 2010 Vagabonds of the Western World was reissued as a 2CD deluxe edition. This version was remastered with bonus tracks. The original album and bonus material is featured on disc 1, while disc 2 features bonus material.