Napalm Death has always been an interesting anomaly in the metal underground: generally considered to be the inventors of grindcore, the band eventually became a ragged patchwork of punk, death metal, and hardcore that was simultaneously sloppy, technical, unwaveringly ugly, and downright vicious. And political – proof being this recording made at a 2002 London animal rights benefit gig…
The concerto, such a familiar feature of the modern concert landscape, seems a simple thing in its opposition of individual and group. But its early history is not so simple; composers had to find structures that would support contrasts between one or more soloists and an orchestra. The "classic" Baroque concertos of Corelli actually represented a simplification of experiments carried out by earlier composers, the Bolognese Giuseppe Torelli central among them. Torelli is usually associated in Baroque listeners' minds with a few trumpet concertos, two of which (labeled sinfonias) are heard here. The short concertos for one or two violins (mostly six or seven minutes long, for three movements) are rarer but very attractive. They don't have the clean symmetries of the Vivaldian concerto, instead exploiting various ways of breaking up a movement into solo and tutti. Although short and essentially compact, each movement has an aspect of free imagination that is nicely brought out by the veteran English early music conductor and violinist Simon Standage, who joins with several other well-known soloists from Britain's historical-performance movement.
During the 1990s, Collegium Musicum 90 and Simon Standage released several volumes of Albinoni concertos, which proved popular with critics and public alike. The concertos were released as discs of single oboe concertos, double oboe concertos, and string concertos. In this re-issue on the Chaconne label, the concertos are presented in opus number order, showing the contrasting colours and tonalities of the concertos as they originally appeared.
Handel's Apollo e Dafne is a difficult work to put in context. Completed in Hanover in 1710 but possibly begun in Italy, its purpose isn't clear, while, as secular cantatas go, it's long (40 minutes) and ambitiously scored for two soloists and an orchestra of strings, oboes, flute, bassoon and continuo. But this isn't just a chunk of operatic experimentation: it sets its own, faster pace than the leisurely unfolding of a full-length Baroque stage-work, yet its simple Ovidian episode, in which Apollo's pursuit of the nymph Dafne results in her transformation into a tree, is drawn with all the subtlety and skill of the instinctive dramatic genius that Handel was.
The first five editions of the From Here To Tranquility compilation series on Silent Records were released in 1993-1996. After a 20 year hiatus, the series was re-launched in 2016. And here is the ninth volume, and it is subtitled In Dreams. Don’t expect to hear ‘music to sleep to’, however, because many aspects of the sleep cycle pass in the thirteen tracks (over 90 minutes) on this compilation. Tulpa Atma, for example, opens the compilation with some intriguingly abstract electronics, while Lingua Lustra’s Sleepwalking brings us back to a steady and relaxing pace. Each track has its very own atmosphere, and they can be quite different in comparison…
With Destruction having staged their comeback live recording one year earlier (the Japan-only Alive Devastation), it was only a matter of time before the other major players of German thrash would follow suit, as the style was coming back to full, bloody bloom in the early 21st century…
"Live in Brazil" Everyone knows the Samba is the National Dance of Brazil - but that changed in 2012 when André Rieu played his first ever concert series in Brazil's hustling and bustling commercial capital of Sao Paulo. "it's a record. A sold-out concert thirty times in one city. We are really proud of that. So many memories of people waltzing, the laughter, the tears of the Brazilians. We will never forget all that." And it's one of Andre many talents that he always finds the right mix between classics and hidden gems of his genre like "Nessun Dorma", his signature tune "The Beautiful Blue Danube" or "Ballad For Adeline" while tapping into the rich tradition of local repertoire. For "Live In Brazil" that ranges from "Manha de Carnaval" to the 2012 global smash "Ai Seu Te Pego" keeping the audience off their seats and dancing in the aisles for long stretches of the 90 minutes of the show..