A most solid release by a player of distinct gift and musicality… his performances are entertaining and colorful. All in all, this is tasteful, skilled piano playing at a very high level, and I was pleased to make Frith's artistic acquaintance. Good sound.

…There are some thrilling moments in a well-paced interpretation, it’s Colin Davis who takes top honours with a brilliant account of Harold in Italy, probably Berlioz at his most eccentric in those sudden outbursts - something he started back in 1830 with the Symphonie fantastique, and there are many points in the first movement when one could seamlessly pass into that work. The fine violist Nobuko Imai is a wistful Harold.

In the liner notes to these carefully packaged reissues, all four of the Incredible String Band principals– co-founder Clive Palmer, core duo Mike Heron and Robin Williamson, and Elektra records executive Joe Boyd– offer their insights in separate essays. Three of them mention the smell of patchouli. Such were the times, certainly, but the ISB are loved equally by avant-garde musicians, psychedelia enthusiasts, and those slightly dweeby young gentlemen who hang around music shops on college campuses. The reissue of their first four albums probably put to rest any notion that the ISB were a properly great band, releasing just one true classic, but they were rarely anything less than brave, inspired, and profoundly weird.

This rich set of music by J.S. Bach (or connected to him by attribution or publication) and transcribed for the guitar provides a stunning example of the versatility of the composer’s music, the unquestionable genius of which renders it universally successful on any instrument with polyphonic capabilities (solo string instruments included).

Research, experimentation, discovery and rediscovery of new forms and ways of expression are the basis of a musician’s work and, in the realisation of this project, they represent the cornerstones of an artistic partnership intended to give value to an important part of the saxophone repertoire, namely that related to transcriptions with piano accompaniment. Though the saxophone is a relatively recent instrument, it became a leading protagonist on the musical scene of the 20th century.

The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century continues true to it's original guiding spirit, with a new recording of the six Hamburg Symphonies, Wq 182 by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. This second son of JS Bach, Carl Philipp has sometimes had a rough ride with posterity (and with some of his contemporaries too). Although overshadowed later by Haydn and Mozart - albeit admired by the pair - and overshadowed in his lifetime by Handel, he remains a crucial link between the Baroque and the Classical, particularly for the ultra-sensitive style, his Empfindsamkeit.

Igor Stravinsky is not a composer who is usually associated with symphonic form. Five of his compositions bear that name, however, even though they have little in common.

The London Choral Sinfonia presents a captivating blend of French choral music under the direction of Michael Waldron, with soloists Nick Pritchard and Miriam Allan. Their new album includes Jean Langlais' monumental masterpiece "Messe Solennelle," accompanied by staples of the choral repertoire: Gabriel Fauré's "Cantique de Jean Racine" and César Franck's "Psalm 150". The album also features hidden gems such as Marcel Dupré's "Quatre Motets," as well as fresh arrangements of Franck’s "Panis Angelicus" and Gounod's "Ave Verum" by Composer-in-Residence, Owain Park. These reimagined pieces breathe new life into beloved favourites. Under Michael Waldron's direction, the LCS continues its tradition of excellence, blending celebrated works with lesser-known treasures, and winning new audiences with its rich romantic colours and innovative interpretations.

The much sought-after young American cellist John-Henry Crawford joins forces with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra and conductor Martin West for his latest recording, featuring Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme and Dvořák's beloved Cello Concerto.

The third volume of Mozart’s Masses focuses on works written in Salzburg when the composer was in his late teens and early twenties. The Missa in honorem Sanctissimae Trinitatis , a bright celebratory work, is the only Mass setting without soloists that Mozart composed. The Missa Brevis in D major is a compact, economic setting conforming to the Archbishop’s dictates for shorter works. Its companion, the Missa Brevis in B flat major , though keenly responsive and beautiful, upset church musicians because it utilised a Parisian gavotte in the ‘Dona nobis pacem’ and ended Mozart’s employment on a provocative note.

An exciting young Dutch-based ensemble, performing on gut strings, brings flair and historically informed style to four little-known examples of repertoire from the dawn of the string quartet.

This recording features a work with a strange coincidence in its compositional process and an astonishing dual authorship. Remarkably, Silvius Leopold Weiss’s Lute Suite SW47 (which he named Suonata) also comes with a violin part that can be played over the top of it, composed by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach. A recent comparison of sources revealed that the harpsichord part in Bach’s Suite for Violin & Harpsichord BWV1025, long considered to be of doubtful attribution, perfectly matches Weiss’s suite. The violin part, meanwhile, was indeed composed entirely by Bach and is an additional melody independent of Weiss’s musical material. It feels almost like a ‘free improvisation’ above the suite and recalls a similar process carried out by Charles Gounod in 1859: his Ave Maria fits over the first Prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier BWV846. The sole exception is the Fantasia movement in Bach’s piece, which is not derived from Weiss’s suite, meaning both the violin and harpsichord parts in it are unique to Bach.

Bernd Lhotzky has been Germany’s most important exponent of classic jazz piano for the past three decades. However, his approach to music from the early days of jazz on his new solo album ‘Rag Bag’ is anything but museum-like. He says: ‘What fascinates me in music, art and life in general are the contradictions and contrasts, the syncopations, the cracks in time.’ ‘Rag Bag’ is a journey between times and worlds, a patchwork of the most diverse motifs, styles and associations. The nucleus of the album's music is Ragtime, one of the earliest forms of jazz. Lhotzky says: ‘To this day, what I love about this music is that it is so warm, life-affirming and undisguised and simply bursts with vitality and honest joy.’

Like Saturday Night Live, UFO have had plenty of creative ups and downs over the years but have often demonstrated that one should never give up on them. The veteran hard rockers have recorded some superb albums along the way, and they have recorded some weak, lackluster albums, too. But even when they let their followers down on occasion, UFO have had a way of bouncing back and giving those followers new reasons to be optimistic. The Visitor, it turns out, is a respectable 40th anniversary present from UFO, who were formed in 1969 and remained active 40 years later in 2009. This 2009 release finds two members of the original 1969 lineup (lead singer Phil Mogg and drummer Andy Parker) joined by keyboardist/guitarist Paul Raymond (a 1976 arrival) and guitarist Vinnie Moore, who didn't come on board until the 2000s…

BAT is an American speed metal band with (ex-)members of Municipal Waste, D.R.I. and Volture. The debut album "Wings Of Chains" was released in June 2016 via Hells Headbangers Records. Prior to this, the band released the demo "Primitive Age" and the single "Cruel Discipline".
Ryan Waste is known for his love of the NWOBHM, but with BAT, he’s taken that influence in a fresh direction on "Under the Crooked Claw", with its tight, concise songs loaded with punchy choruses and lightning-laced leads.