This was Angela's debut recording for CBC Enterprises. Her recording debut was on Deutsche Gramophon in 1985, which was one of the prizes of the 1985 International Bach Piano Competition. Having listened avidly to the entire competition (it was broadcast in its entirety on CBC Radio), I can attest that she was not (nor could have been) the "sentimental favourite" of this judged competition, as only one of the ten judges was Canadian. She may have been the sentimental favourite of Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod, but this would hardly have won her first prize.
The popularity of the guitar has never waned and the sun-drenched sound of Spanish guitar music is one of the instrument’s most popular incarnations. At the helm of performers of this style of guitar music is Narciso Yepes who recorded vast amounts of guitar music for Deutsche Gramophon. This collection brings together some of the gems from among these recordings and indeed, from the body of work for Spanish guitar.
FatCat Records present two of modern composition’s leading experimental voices - EMS and XKathdral’s Mtas Erlandsson, and Berlin-based Yair Elazar Glotman - developing the dissonant language of their debut for Miasmah in a poised and bittersweet 2nd album. Having recently signed to FatCat’s 130701 imprint, and following closely on from Deutsche Gramophon’s release of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s ‘Last and First Men’ project which Yair co-composed, the pair’s sophomore album ‘Emanate’ is a powerful and stunningly executed extended duration work that utilises a fantastic ensemble cast and continues to explore their ideas of a ‘displaced sound’ - combining electronic and acoustic sound sources through both analogue and digital means to create an ambiguous composite work, a music that sounds neither clearly electronic or acoustic, existing instead in some in-between space.
In light of the "chill-out" trend of the 1990s, major labels released many albums of slow, meditative pieces to appeal to listeners who wanted relaxing or reflective background music. Deutsche Grammophon's vaults are full of exceptional recordings of classical orchestral music, and the performances by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic are prominent in the label's catalog. The slow selections on Karajan: Adagio are in most cases drawn from larger compositions, though these movements are frequently anthologized as if they were free-standing works. Indeed, many have come to think of the Adagietto from Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 as a separate piece in its own right, largely because of its evocative use in the film Death in Venice. Furthermore, the famous Canon by Johann Pachelbel is seldom played with its original companion piece, the Gigue in D major, let alone in its original version for three violins and continuo; it most often appears in an arrangement for strings.