Mary Beared

A rapacious dragon has been terrorising a Yorkshire village. Gubbins and his daughter Margery, together with Mauxalinda, decide to seek the help of Moore of Moore Hall. Moore needs persuading away from his beer but succumbs to Margery’s pleading, and her promises of love. Unfortunately, he had already promised to marry Mauxalinda, and so the love triangle has to be resolved in dramatic fashion before Moore heads out and defeats the dragon, restoring harmony and prosperity to the village. Following the BBC Music Magazine Opera Award for his recording of Malcolm Arnold’s The Dancing Master, conductor John Andrews returns with the world premiere professional recording of John Frederick Lampe’s operatic comedy The Dragon of Wantley. With librettist Henry Carey, Lampe combines a first-rate score with a quintessentially English plot, told in a tone of earthy satire, pastiching opera’s conventions with skill and affection, but also a razor wit.

For most of his life Eric Craven has kept a very low profile, concentrating on his teaching career and quietly developing his ‘non-prescriptive’ composing method, a sort of aleatory style but which allows the performer varying degrees of freedom. His earlier cycle of short pieces, ‘SET’, was recorded after Craven was persuaded by leading pianists to make his work available.

This excellent heavy prog album was released after Sir Lord Baltimore disbanded & involved the members of Sir Lord Baltimore & produced by Vinny Testa. The Bloody Mary album is in the same vein of Sir Lord Baltimore - perfect heavy progressive rock from USA. Fantastic vocals, swirling organ, fuzzy guitar and pounding drums.

This album of some of the 20th century’s most captivating songs and standards are heard here in dazzling new arrangements by Richard Balcombe. With a perfect marriage of words and music, these classic songs have a timeless appeal. Whether written for movies, revues or musicals, or specifically for the most renowned singers of the day, all the greatest composers and lyricists of the time are represented in this outstanding new collection.