Main Ingrediant

Hertel was born as son of Johann Christian Hertel, a well-respected violinist and composer. He received his first music lessons from a pupil of Johann Sebastian Bach, and he accompanied his father already at the age of 12. In 1744 he became violinist and harpsichordist at the court in Strelitz, which was dissolved in 1752. Two years later he was employed at the court in Schwerin, where he stayed until his death, although the court chapel moved to Ludwigslust in 1767. He remained at the service of the court, and concentrated on composition, organising concerts at the court and musical education.

Carl Friedrich Abel also composed orchestral works for the London concert series of Bach-Abel Concerts, organized jointly with J. C. Bach, including 46 symphonies, 40 of which appeared in print during his lifetime. The six remaining works, five late symphonies and one Sinfonia Concertante, have survived in manuscript in the Royal Court Library in Berlin. On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of his birth, the Main Baroque Orchestra under Martin Jopp presents four of these symphonies as world premiere recordings as well as the Sinfonia Concertante on this recording.

It may sound silly to call the 12th album by a group with an eight-year string of gold records behind them a "breakthrough," but that's what Main Course was. The group's first disco album – and, for many white listeners, the first disco album they ever purchased – Main Course marked a huge change in the Bee Gees' sound. The group's earlier LPs, steeped in a dense romantic balladry, were beautifully crafted but too serious for any but hardcore fans. Main Course had a few ballads, such as "Songbird" and "Country Lanes," but the writing was simpler, and the rest of it was made up of catchy dance tunes (heavily influenced by the Philadelphia-based soul music of the period), in which the beat and the texture of the voices and instruments took precedence over the words. The combination proved irresistible, and Main Course – driven by the singles "Jive Talkin'," "Nights on Broadway," and "Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)" – attracted millions of new listeners.

Over the last decade, Real Estate have crafted warm yet meticulous pop-minded music, specialising in soaring melodies that are sentimentally evocative and unmistakably their own. The Main Thing dives even further into the musical dichotomies they’re known for—lilting, bright guitar lines set against emotionally nuanced lyrics, complex arrangements conveyed breezily— and what emerges is a superlative collection of interrogative songs as full of depth, strangeness and contradictions as they are lifting hooks.

Improvisations, free improvisations and medieval music from Codex Faenza (ca 1400) and Conrad Paumann (ca 1409-1473), plaid on Clavicymbalum, Clavicytherium and Clavichordium, all medieval keyboard instruments built by David Boinnard in Lille, France.