Works For Harmonica

Hyperion have come up trumps again with another delightful disc of out-of-the-way music. The brainchild of Graham Johnson, it is subtitled "150 Years of English Women Composers", with notes by Sophie Fuller, author of a book due out next year entitled The Pandora Guide to Women Composers. In the course of the programme the performers uncover a host of imaginative, impassioned and/or joyful songs that have lain for too long literally unsung, and revived others that were hugely popular until very recent times. Let me say at once that they couldn't have more perceptive or loving or enthusiastic interpreters than Johnson and Johnson, who excel even their own high standards of singing and playing.

Slim Harpo - Buzzin' The Blues: The Complete Slim Harpo (2015) {5CD Box Set, Bear Family BCD 17339 EK}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.56 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 935 Mb
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© 2015 Bear Family | BCD 17339 EK
Blues / Electric Blues / Harmonica Blues / Swamp Blues

Back when the Rolling Stones were proud to be the voice of revolt and Mick Jagger was as far away from his knighthood as Zayn Malik is from a seat in the House of Lords, they were, very occasionally, modest, not to say humble. A couple years after cutting their eponymous first album in 1964, chock full of covers of blues and rhythm and blues songs by black artists including a buzz-toned slice of anthropomorphism about our favourite honey-making insect, Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine: “You could say that we did blues to turn people on, but why they would be turned on by us is unbelievably stupid. I mean what's the point in listening to us doing ‘I’m a King Bee’ when you can hear Slim Harpo do it?”

The essence of Camille Saint-Saëns' music comes through perhaps most clearly in his music for solo instrument and orchestra, which exemplifies his elegant combination of melody and conservatory-generated virtuosity. The two cello concertos are here, plus a pair of crowd-pleasing short works for piano and orchestra, and the evergreen Carnival of the Animals, with pianists Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier joining forces along with a collection of instruments that includes the often-omitted glass harmonica. There are all kinds of attractions here: the gently humorous and not over-broad Carnival, the songful cello playing of Truls Mørk, and the little-known piano-and-orchestra scene Africa, Op. 89, with its lightly Tunisian flavor (sample this final track). But really, the central thread connecting them all is the conducting of Neeme Järvi and the light, graceful work of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; French music is the nearly 80-year-old Järvi's most congenial environment, and in this recording, perhaps his last devoted to Saint-Saëns, he has never been better.

This is an opportunity to study and enjoy a variety of chamber works drawn primarily from Mozart’s "golden years" in Vienna, 1781–1791. The centerpiece of the course is the set of six Haydn string quartets that Mozart dedicated to his friend, the great Joseph Haydn. Across the span of the course, you will explore works that represent the three types of chamber music that Mozart composed: Any chamber group consisting, in whole or in part, of a string quartet: two violins, a viola, and a cello. The "piano plus" combination: works for keyboard and some other instrument or instruments. Everything else: combinations that employ neither a string quartet nor a piano.

What made Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart perhaps the most complete "musical package" in history—a man who created more masterpieces of virtually every musical genre of his day than any other composer before or since? There is perhaps no better way to explore this question than by studying his chamber music. Nowhere is Mozart's maturity and mastery more apparent than in the chamber music he wrote during the last 10 years of his life.

Following the success of Unplugged…and Seated, Rod Stewart had shrewdly repositioned himself as a mature, middle-aged man who still had a slight streak of his wilder days in him. Unsurprisingly, the music both recalled his past glories in instrumentation, yet the attack was different – the acoustics rocked, but it wasn't bracing; it was like a back-porch jam session…

All of Piazzolla’s more than 750 works are inextricably bound to an essential and unmistakable Argentinian identity. In commemoration of 100th anniversary of the birth of the genius of Nuevo Tango, the young Danish master of the modern accordion, Bjarke Mogensen, is joined by the award-wining percussionist Johan Bridger and winner of the title “Chromatic Harmonica World Champion”, and ‘New Jazz Star of The Year’ Mathias Heise. Together with members of The Danish Chamber Players they bring Piazzolla’s vibrant and sensuous scores vividly to life!