Rebecca Stuthers

Rebecca Rust, cello, and Friedrich Edelmann, bassoon, have played together in duos, trios and larger chamber music groups for over 30 years. From their home base in Germany, this huband-and-wife team performs in America, Europe and Japan including radio and TV productions. Praised by Carlo Maria Giulini for her exceptional musicality, the American cellist Rebecca Rust, a native of California, received her first piano lessons with her mother at the age of five and began cello lessons with Margaret Rowell. Rowell said: Rebecca Rust is one of the most talented cellists that I have had the pleasure of teaching. Blessed with a beautiful ear and facility, she has used these gifts as tools to dig deep into the music itself, thereby giving her listeners a profound musical experience. Rebecca Rust is a brilliant cellist. Friedrich Edelmann grew up in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He studied with Alfred Rinderspacher, Klaus Thunemann, and Milan Turkovic. In 1977 he became the Principal Bassoonist of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. They are joined on this recording by pianist Scott Faigen.

For over 20 years, Echoes of Swing have been an essential go-to band for lovers of classic jazz. They show quite how many sides there are to it, and do so in a way that is always consummately fresh. The quartet of Bernd Lhotzky (piano), Colin T. Dawson (trumpet), Chris Hopkins (alto saxophone) and Oliver Mewes (drums) breathe new life into the canon of the Jazz Age with their skill as players, their fine arrangements – and with a lot of humour. The band play their own compositions too. And each of their albums is built around a theme: after "Blue Pepper", "Dancing", "Travelin'" and the "Tribute to Bix Beiderbecke", their new album "Winter Days at Schloss Elmau" is a winter walk, but with a swing to it. The new album continues in the line of superb recordings that ACT has made in the large concert hall at Schloss Elmau. Indeed, where would one find more inspiration for a winter album than in this unique location with its breathtaking views of the Bavarian Alps?

Clarinettist Barnaby Robson performs a rich programme of 20th-century and contemporary music for clarinet and piano, including world-premiere recordings. The release opens with Barnaby Robson’s collaboration with BAFTA-winning sound designer Martin Cantwell: a recording of Steve Reich’s intricate New York Counterpoint, which involves eleven pre-recorded clarinet lines. Herbert Howells is celebrated for his choral music but his instrumental works are less famous; with pianist Fiona Harris, Robson performs the 1946 version of Howells’s Clarinet Sonata, never recorded before.

The second volume of this series (Volume 1 is on 8.573995) visits 20th-century France, where the combination of trumpet and piano inspired music of ravishing beauty, intimacy and wit. Through the bluesy retrospection of Jean Hubeau's Sonata, the voluptuous rhapsody of Florent Schmitt's Suite and the avantgarde eclecticism of Antoine Tisné's Héraldiques, this album explores the quintessentially Gallic sonorities that came to redefine the instruments voice for the modern era.

Rebecca Kilgore stars on all but four of the 18 selections on this excellent modern swing CD. Tone-wise she resembles Doris Day while having a straightforward style a little reminiscent of Maxine Sullivan and Lucy Ann Polk. The personnel and instrumentation differ on most songs, ranging from a sextet to a duet with pianist Keith Ingham on "How About Me." Many of the songs are real obscurities and are greatly uplifted by these performances. Of the instrumentals, trumpeter Joe Wilder shows on "Time on My Hands" why his pretty tone and lyrical style are rated so high. Ingham's trio's feature is Andre Previn's "In Our Little Boat,"; "Why Did I Choose You" has unaccompanied solo guitar from Gene Bertonicini and Coleman Hawkins' "Hamid" is a fine jam for Ken Peplowski. But otherwise, get this CD for the always enjoyable singing of Rebecca Kilgore.