Nero 6

Singer and keyboard player Gianni Leone tried a solo career with the new name of Leo Nero after the demise of his band Il Balletto di Bronzo, and the result was a very good album, Vero, released by Harvest in 1977 and recorded a year before in New York. The album is totally played and sung by Leo himself, and despite some commercial pop songs, it has some good moments reminding of his old band's sound, like in "La Discesa Nel Cervello", "Il Castello" and the intense closing track "Una Gabbia Per Me". Obviously the sound is mainly keyboard based, but Leone played drums, minimoog bass lines and even guitar on some tracks.

Handel arrived in Hamburg in 1703, aged eighteen. He spent four years in the city and wrote several works for the town's opera house. Hamburg opera was a rather eclectic beast at the time, drawing on Italian and French language and instrumental style alongside the native German. Handel fell happily into this genre; this CD brings together a selection of the delightful orchestral music (which tends to be in the French style) that Handel wrote there, some of it recorded for the first time.

In 1875, The Demon had the greatest success of any of Rubinstein operas, both in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Other compositions included the E flat Piano Concerto, Fantasia for Two Pianos, and the opera Nero". After a concert tour of England, he was made a Hereditary Nobleman by the Tsar, and in 1883 he was awarded the Cross of St. Vladimir for his contribution to musical education in Russia. He also gained a new student named Alexander Glazunov, whose talent at the piano greatly impressed him.