Robin

Bach’s music has always attracted arrangers and orchestrators – such as Stokowski, Elgar and Busoni, to name just three.

Robin Hill was born in Yorkshire, England. His first instrument, at age seven, was the violin. At 10 he started to play the guitar, which he studied at music college. He later participated in master classes with the eminent Venezuelan guitarist, Alirio Diaz.

Zwei Schätze werden endlich der Offentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht: Das Berkeley-Manuskript und das Caumont-Manuskript mit zahlreichen anonymen Stücken für Orgel, die durch diese Ersteinspielungen endlich zum Leben erweckt werden.

“Rob wanted the world of The Northman to feel harsh and uncomfortable, and for everything to feel like it was caked in mud and dry blood, so it was crucial for the score to mirror that.” Composers Robin Carolan (Tri-Angle Records) and Sebastian Gainsborough (Vessel) were given a task of epic proportions when director Rob Eggers (The VVitch, The Lighthouse) asked them to create the score for his ambitious and highly anticipated new film The Northman. They needed to make a score that both honoured the immense research that had gone into the authenticity of this Viking era period piece and complimented the cinematic maximalism of the film for a modern audience. The artists stretched themselves to the depths of their creativity and the resulting album is a gorgeous sonic tableaux that places the listener right in the center of the film.

"Bridge Of Sighs", Robin Trower's second album after leaving Procol Harum, was critically acclaimed and was a commercial breakthrough, selling 3 million copies worldwide and taking Robin's original trio concept into exciting new territory.

Bach’s music has always attracted arrangers and orchestrators – such as Stokowski, Elgar and Busoni, to name just three. Regardless of its original version, Bach’s music has an expressive power, drama and architectural logic that lend themselves well to expanded orchestral sonorities. Bassoonist and conductor Robin O’Neill buried his head in the Goldberg Variations, which he had discovered through Glenn Gould’s recordings, during the first months of the Covid lockdown. Soon after that, the idea of making an arrangement for orchestra began to obsess him as he began hearing instrumental and orchestral sonorities in the keyboard work. Since the main challenge was to reclothe the music without damaging the subtle intricacy of the piece, and after much thought and experimentation, O’Neill chose instruments that Bach himself would have recognized for the solo parts. His reinterpretation of the Goldberg Variations offers a mixture of full orchestral variations interspersed with concertante ones involving two, three or four solo instruments, at times close to St Matthew Passion-style writing. Completed during a difficult period, this arrangement was made, in the words of O’Neill, in the hope that it expresses the joy and solace that Bach’s music gives both performer and listener.

Constantly in search of eclectic and meaningful programmes, the soprano Anna Prohaska here celebrates ‘life in death’.

Robin Pharo and the ensemble Près de votre oreille offer a fascinating dive into the English vocal repertoire of the late 16th century.

A double-disc collection of unheard live performances from Robin Trower's commercial peak of the late '70s, State to State: Live Across America 1974-1980 divides pretty neatly into an eight-song set from Philadelphia in 1974 on disc one, supplemented with three California cuts from the same year, then six songs from Illinois in 1976 on disc two, rounded out by two 1977 Oklahoma tracks and six cuts from Missouri in 1980. The states alone suggest how deep in the trenches Trower was in the '70s, playing venues –- and states -– that weren't glamorous but certainly had a yen for his elongated Hendrixian blues rock. State to State spans locations and years, not to mention bandmembers, but there's a unity to the 24 songs because each cut captures a guitarist eager to dismiss the basics of a song and get down to the chords so he can just jam. For those Trower fans who enjoy endless solos and overamped blues rave-ups, this shouldn't be missed.