Karl Off

Even though Abel left behind a sizable oeuvre, including many symphonic works, he is maybe best remembered for his extraordinary compositions for the “queen of all instruments”, as he called it: the viola da gamba.

This set forms exactly the period in which Santana was most influenced by jazzrock, starting whith the supreme coherent Caravanserai,then joining John McLaughlin on Love Devotion Surrender, followed by Welcome, in fact the best of the set, although less coherent in the sense of being an album: the tracks are very different in style, but are all very good!…

This second volume in Sony's EU Original Album Classics series looks at five albums over a ten-year period. The first four of these – Inner Secrets, Marathon, Zebop, and Shango – catch the band during a renaissance of singles and a decline in album sales in the marketplace…

One is inclined to speak of “soulmates” after hearing Simon Höfele and Elisabeth Brauss play as a duo and after getting to know them both personally. It is like two people connecting with one another in music and in conversation when they either know each other very well or have forged a special bond for some other reason. The latter is sure to be true – this album is their first joint recording venture, and they have not been working together for very long either.

In the six years since the release of their merely good effort Barking, electronica veterans Underworld were tied up with big things, like solo projects, Eno collaborations, film scores, and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, where they were musical directors for the opening ceremony. Take all that into consideration, and this excellent 2016 LP seems more closely linked to its predecessor, and acts like a natural swing-back-into-action after getting the too-busy-/tries-too-hard/return-to-form album out of the way. Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future is also an album longtime fans will instantly embrace, but it's an evolution as well. Bookended with excellent surprises, it opens with a dark, half-tempo track that's got Gary Numan in its veins ("I Exhale") and closes with a masterful work that mashes Kraftwerk, classical music, and the blissful Underworld found on their 1999 album Beaucoup Fish ("Nylon Strung")…

When the young Edvard Grieg travelled to Leipzig to study, Norway was still a nation with modest traditions of teaching and education within the realm of classical music. He was not the first Norwegian musician to head off to this power centre of European art music, and others later followed in his footsteps.

Funèbre stands out in the New Series both for its due attention to German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905-1963) and for welcoming conductor Christoph Poppen and the Munich Chamber Orchestra into the ECM fold. The latter have since gone on to record a number of pivotal records for the label, including the all-Scelsi program Natura Renovatur and the Bach/Webern crossover project Ricercar. Here they are joined by violinist Isabelle Faust, the Petersen String Quartet, and clarinetist Paul Meyer for a shuffling of dark, darker, and darkest.

Lute music in Germany is closely associated with the name Silvius Leopold Weiss who influenced generations of lutenists with his outstanding compositions and was the cornerstone of German lute music. As his oeuvre has already enjoyed a wide distribution and substantial appreciation, this anthology only touches on a few individual works as reference points and places a greater focus on Weiss’s musical environment and legacy. A particular focus is given to Bayreuth which developed into a regional cultural centre for the lute thanks to the encouragement of the Margravine Wilhelmine, the sister of Frederick the Great.