Best known for his stint fronting art pop hitmakers Supertramp, Roger Hodgson was born in Portsmouth, England, on March 21, 1950. While growing up in Oxford, Hodgson started playing guitar before he was a teenager, and was soon writing songs while at boarding school…
Roger Hodgson is the voice of Supertramp. Co-founding the band in 1969, he was the lead singer and writer of nearly all their hits throughout the band's heyday in the seventies and early eighties. Since leaving Supertramp in 1983 he has had a series of critically acclaimed and successful solo albums and come through a major accident in the late eighties that threatened his entire career. This DVD, the first live release from either Roger or Supertramp, was filmed in Montreal and catches Roger Hodgson at his very best.
Roger's Classics Live CD is a spectacular collection of his live performances from acoustic, band and orchestra shows around the world recorded on his 2010 tour. Check out this version of the Classics from the composer of Supertramp's Greatest Hits Roger Hodgson helped define a generation of progressive rock and is recognized as one of the most gifted composers, songwriters and lyricists of our time. His trademark way of setting introspective lyrics to upbeat melodies has found its way into the hearts of over three generations around the world. His songs are deeply personal pieces of his heart and soul that continue to touch people around the world. While everyone knows his songs, many don't know his name, but in this exciting new collection of these classics, it's clear that Roger Hodgson is not only the signature voice but also the spiritual force behind the songs that have become the soundtrack to our lives…
This anthology of devotional music from 18th-century Venice and Naples offers an interesting and varied programme. Best known is Pergolesi’s Stabat mater, but the settings by Domenico Scarlatti and Bononcini stand well in comparison. The motets by Lotti, Caldara and Alessandro Scarlatti are real discoveries; Norrington’s performances of the latter are particularly fine. Guest’s Pergolesi suffers from a focus of sound which makes the interpretation seem somewhat generalised. However, all these performances give pleasure, while the music is melodically fresh and rhythmically vital.
A car crash in March 1953 cruelly cut short the career of Roger Desormiere, who at the age of 53 had already established a reputation as one of the most insightful French conductors of his or any previous era. The resulting stroke left him barely able to communicate, incapable of work. His pupils, including Pierre Boulez, were distraught, but Desormiere clung on for thirteen painful years, eventually dying a broken man. Desormieres legacy on disc is a case of what might have been. Record companies showed little interest in recording the modern repertoire of which he was so stylish and dedicated an interpreter, at least the equal in this regard of Hans Rosbaud and Rene Leibowitz. His one indisputable classic of the gramophone is the 1941 HMV recording of Pelleas et Melisande, but he recorded much else for several different labels. The present set brings together all his Decca recordings for the first time, made in mono between 1947 and 1951, newly remastered and constituting a substantial tribute to a musician of manifold gifts.