Erkundunggen b2 Anne Buscha

Songwriter and pianist Anne Clark has been a cult figure since the early '80s and has amassed a rather sizable catalog despite her small but rabid following. She writes nearly-Gothic love songs full of obsession and pathos, and pretty orchestral settings with clever instrumental figures and stinging piano runs and minor-key epiphanies. She's a consummate artist, playing to her strengths while trying to subtly, but surely, extend her reach, and always following her own muse, even when it takes her into dissonant territory. Most of her albums are out of print even on CD, and sell for collector's prices when they can be found. This is too bad, because Clark has assembled a solid, if quirky, and passionately honest body of work. This best-of issued by Beehive is truly that. It features 24 tracks and clocks in at over 75 minutes. Many of these are Clark's most lovely songs, such as "The Sitting Room," "All Night Party" (with Vini Reilly of Durutti Column), the "12" remix" of "Our Darkness," and "The Last Emotion," as well as instrumental themes such as "Swimming" and "An Ordinary Life".

This is a live recording, made at a pair of concerts in May, and ‘live’ is undoubtedly the word for it. All the performances have an improvisatory quality, interpretative decisions seemingly made before your very ears. At the beginning of the Prokofiev it is as though Mutter and Orkis, realising that the audience in the Beethovensaal are already uncommonly silent and attentive, had decided after a quick glance at each other to begin the Sonata almost confidingly, with quiet tenderness and muted colour.

Anne Sofie von Otter is a leading mezzo-soprano known for her versatility in operatic roles, her interesting recital choices, and her willingness to take vocal risks. Her father was a Swedish diplomat whose career took the family to Bonn, London, and back to Stockholm while Anne Sofie was growing up. As a result, she gained fluency in languages. She studied music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Her main voice teacher was Vera Rozsa, while Erik Werba and Geoffrey Parsons coached her in lieder interpretation.

Deutsche Grammophon's Simply Anne-Sophie is touted as "a unique collection of Anne-Sophie Mutter's incomparable Deutsche Grammophon recordings," it is simply one of several – Mutter Modern, Romance, and The Great Violin Concertos are among others Deutsche Grammophon has compiled from its extensive Mutter holdings from over the years. Simply Anne-Sophie has a greater chronological range than its predecessors as its earliest entries date from 1992 recordings made for the hit disc Carmen-Fantaisie and stretches through to some selections from Mutter Mozart: Violin Concertos, recorded at Abbey Road in 2005.

Superstar violinist Anne Akiko Meyers’ imagination and ingenuity knows no bounds. Her idea to persuade leading living composer Morten Lauridsen to transform his choral masterpiece, O Magnum Mysterium, into a work for violin and choir is a masterstroke. Teaming up with conductor Grant Gershon – who first collaborated with Anne as chamber musicians over 40 years ago – and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, for whom Lauridsen was their first Composer in Residence, Anne rounds out this digital EP with three other arrangements for violin and chorus of ever-popular works by J. S. Bach. The result is gold dust for the holiday season.

A child prodigy in her youth and a competition-winning virtuoso by her late teens, cellist Anne Gastinel has gone on to handsomely fulfill all the promise augured by such auspicious beginnings. She has appeared on French television, received countless awards, made over a dozen recordings, and given concerts at the major venues throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, often with the leading conductors and orchestras. In addition, despite her busy concert and recording schedules, Gastinel has served on the faculty of the Lyon Conservatory as professor of cello.

Anne Murray's time with Capitol Records was running out when she recorded "Croonin." Her singles were no long charting and her album sales had dropped off significantly. The public was no longer buying the pop-rock-country formula that had served her so well for twenty-five years. What to do? Record an album of American standards. Why not? "Old Cape Cod," "Secret Love," Hey There," "The Wayward Wind" "Teach Me Tonight" – these were the tunes she listened to on the radio while growing up in Nova Scotia. They fit her middle-register voice like a glove. They were in her DNA. In a way, "Croonin" is the answer to "Where Do You Go When You Dream" (the title of an earlier an album). You sing the songs you truly love. And sings them she does, with all the dignity, sincerity, polish, and professionalism that distinguished her long career. Anne Murray was always a class act.