The Times 24 Jun 2024

The most comprehensive collection of the Pretty Things’ BBC ‘live’ recordings on the market, with several previously unreleased tracks, now all together for the first time on this newly remastered 4CD set, assembled with the assistance of the BBC. Sourced from the BBC archives, this newly updated 60-track set covers numerous songs from the 1960s & 1970s period - including smash hits such as ‘Rosalyn’, Don’t Bring Me Down’, ‘Midnight To Six Man’, R&B standards ‘Road Runner’ and ‘Route 66’, and later classic album tracks ‘Defecting Grey’, ‘S.F. Sorrow Is Born’, ‘Singapore Silk Torpedo’ and ‘Dream / Joey’. These sessions were recorded by the world renowned broadcasting organisation for radio and TV. Our CDs explore all the Pretty Things’ BBC Radio One output, including 1960s ‘Top Gear’, ‘Saturday Club’, the later ‘Peel Sessions’ and ‘Sounds Of The 70s’…

Between 1999 and 2004 conductor, musicologist, organist and harpsichordist, Ton Koopman recorded the complete cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir, which he founded in 1979. This 2-CD volume contains a selection of Highlights from the award winning 22-volume series of the Complete Cantatas. The inlay contains an additional listing of all cantatas in order of BWV-numbers, referring to the volumes of the complete series. The soloists featured are sopranos Sandrine Piau, Elisabeth von Magnus, Johannette Zomer, Lisa Larsson, and Anne Grimm; altos Bogna Bartosz and Annette Markert; Tenors Christoph Prégardien and Paul Agnew; and Bass Klauss Mertens.