Masterclas Kim Scott

Featuring no less than 72 remastered tracks and many rare and unreleased mixes, this collection serves to highlight the pioneering pop/house crossover sound created especially for Mel & Kim by songwriting and production powerhouse Stock Aitken Waterman and the PWL studio team. ‘Respectable’ became SAW’s first own composition to top the UK charts (they’d merely produced Dead or Alive’s ‘You Spin Me Round’ stomper) and while there are online debates about it, ‘Showing Out’ is widely considered the first ever British house record.

This beautifully programmed CD presents three settings for viola and orchestra and a more eloquent statement about the beauty of the viola as an instrument would be hard to imagine (except for perhaps including Vaughan Williams' 'Flos Campi'). The viola finds that middle voice between violin and cello, a rich tone with a built in quality of mournfulness. That quality has inspired the works on this recording and the result is some of the more wistful music ever written. Dennis Russell Davies conducts the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra with the superb violist Kim Kashkashian.