Karl Off

Sabine Erdmann may be a harpsichordist. But she’s also in love with her organ. So, she instantly caught fire when two friends suggested she should record a CD on it with music from the time of Heinrich Biber. There was no deeper concept, no precise plan. But with just two phone calls, Sabine had set up a trio of musicians from Berlin’s dynamic historically informed practise scene. Immediately, they began searching for rewarding and surprising repertoire.

The Bee Gees' second R&B album, Children of the World, had the advantage of being written and recorded while the group was riding a string of Top Ten singles and the biggest wave of public adulation in their history off of the Main Course album. The group felt emboldened, but was also hamstrung by the absence of producer Arif Mardin, whose services were no longer available to them now that RSO Records had severed its ties to Atlantic Records. So they produced it themselves, all six bandmembers doing their best to emulate what Mardin would have had them do, with assistance from Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson.

Gold buried deep in the BIS back-catalog since 1980 (but readily available), this CD adds a couple of apt fillers from 1981 to the program of the original analog LP. Larsson’s Pastoral Suite is the best-known music here, and makes a fine overture in its most sprightly recorded chamber performance. The Romance has live intensity, helped by the sound, a classic piece of minimalist work by Bis proprietor, Robert von Bar: just a small Revox half-track reel-to-reel machine, and a couple of mikes above and in front of the conductor. T

Bernstein opera sets come few and far between, but those that do emerge are treated as isolated landmarks. Such was his recording of Richard Strauss` ''Der Rosenkavalier'' of 1971 (CBS M3K 42564, three CDs), recorded three years after he virtually swept the Viennese off their collective feet with it at the Staatsoper.

Finnish frontrunners Wolfheart have proven themselves to be one of metal’s most captivating acts of northern heritage and one of the fastest rising bands in the international melodic death metal scene. Over the course of the last two years alone, the band has remained relentless with the release of their highly acclaimed full-length, Wolves of Karelia (2020) and Skull Soldiers EP (2021), gaining massive praise from fans and press alike with their icy tales of battle and triumph. The new album, King Of The North, picks up right where Wolfheart left off - taking every aspect of their trademark sound of colossal melodies, growling vocals and driving drum rhythms to searing new levels. Each song on King Of The North is dedicated to a different story of Finnish mythology - underlined by Wolfheart’s grand, crushing songwriting and production…

Two new voices join Fabio Bonizzoni's project of recording the entirety of the cantatas with instrumental accompaniment which Handel composed when in Italy: sopranos Nuria Rial and Maria Grazia Schiavo enter the compan of Roberta Invernizzi, Emanuela Galli, Raffaella Milanesi and Salvo Vitale, the singers who we have been able to hear in the first three volumes of the collection. In this fourth instalment (out of a total of seven CDs planned for release up to the end of 2009), we rediscover the patronage of the Marquis Francesco Maria Ruspoli, which lay behind the important cantata a due entitled Aminta e Fillide; this was a work which was to provide the composer with a veritable seam of musical material for use, as "borrowings", in his operas Agrippina and Rinaldo - one of the reasons perhaps why this cantata has been rarely performed and even less recorded.