Skafandr a Motýl

The second recording and first studio set by the L.A. Four matched together Bud Shank on alto and flute, guitarist Laurindo Almeida, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Shelly Manne for a diverse yet consistently enjoyable program. The selections range from "Dindi" and "Manteca" to "St. Thomas" and a 13-minute exploration of "Concierto de Aranjuez." As usual, the band mixes together bossa nova and Brazilian jazz, some touches of classical music, and cool-toned bop. Recommended as a strong example of the group's appealing sound.

With a CV that includes playing with Rainbow, Ozzy Osbourne (that organ intro to Mr Crowley), Black Sabbath, Whitesnake, Judas Priest, Jethro Tull, Saxon, Thin Lizzy, Gary Moore and, for most of this century, Deep Purple, Don Airey is the keyboard maestro of British heavy rock…

Formed in 2014 by founding Entombed member Lars-Göran Petrov, Entombed A.D. sees the influential Scandinavian death metal legends' punishing work published under a slightly different moniker…

Pentatone presents a new album full of world-premiere recordings of orchestral songs by Hans Sommer, sung by an excellent quartet of soloists – Mojca Erdmann, Anke Vondung, Mauro Peter and Benjamin Appl – together with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under the baton of Guillermo García Calvo. Sommer was a Liszt student whose operas were performed and praised by Richard Strauss, but sunk into relative oblivion due to his unusual career path and independence from major publishers. The songs were discovered recently and can finally be presented to the world. Focusing mostly on Goethe poetry, combining high Romanticism with folk styles, Sommer’s songs are colourfully orchestrated, harmonically audacious, and often highly dramatic and evocative.

The Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin (1937-2020), who died at the beginning of the pandemic-related cultural hiatus which has been unique with regard to world history, was able to experience considerable appreciation in his last two decades, which recently gained more and more momentum. Coming from the best Soviet aristocracy of piano teaching - Kapustin was a pupil of a pupil of Horowitz's teacher Blumenfeld and then studied with the great Alexander Goldenweiser until 1961 - he was denied great recognition in the Soviet Union. As with many great piano composers since Chopin, the cycle of concert etudes from the middle of his life is particularly suitable for an introduction to this world of works. Kapustin's typical reference to jazz, which probably kept him from greater success in the Soviet years, is based on the highly individual, deliberate adaptation of stylistic elements. He got to know jazz greats such as Ellington, Basie, Cole, Garner, Peterson and others through records and the radio and picked out what suited him. The extremely sensitive, not monotonously hammering as is so often the case, approach of the Chinese pianist A Bu, who is also trained in jazz, is pleasing with regard to interpretation, and he demonstrates his affinity for Kapustin's music through two samples of his own work.