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Gramophone CD OF THE MONTH
Pitch-perfect Prokofiev from the Pavel Haas Quartet... what comes through above all is a laser-like intensity and youthful brio... In the wondrous Adagio the cello line rises high, ghostly melodic statements in octaves can expose the smallest tuning difficulties and pizzicati needs must sparkle like. The young players pass every test before dispatching the inventive finale with equal aplomb, differentiating a wide variety of moods and timbres within a swiftish frame. Of the small clutch of classic performances of the component pieces, none is more usefully programmed than the present disc, nor so naturally recorded. Why hesitate?Gramophone
BBC Music Magazine - CD OF THE MONTH
Rather than trawl for forgotten manuscripts more widely through Latin America, Ashley Solomon and his group Florilegium prefer to concentrate their efforts on the archives in Bolivia. Solomon has founded a choir there, and both his groups regularly appear at the biennial renaissance and baroque festival in the Jesuit missions of the Chiquitos region. Their latest compilation includes pieces from those missions and from those of Moxos, together with music from the cathedral in La Plata, the present-day city of Sucre. Though the sources aren''t always made clear, it''s a lively, nicely varied sequence, mostly of works showcasing Solomon''s excellent Arakaender choir, interspersed with an anonymous trio-sonatas and organ pieces recorded on a wonderfully gutsy instrument at the mission church of Santa Ana in the Bolivian part of the Amazon basin. The Italian-born Domenico Zipoli is the best known composer represented, appropriately enough, perhaps, for he did at least make the journey from Europe to the Spanish colonies in the new world. The Guardian
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

Though period-instrument recordings of the Fantastic are not uncommon, none that I have heard makes Berlioz’s linear scoring so startlingly different. This, you feel, is how it would have sounded in the 1830s (Erard harps and pianos included). The woodwind and horns, in particular, leap out, but it is the sheer raw clarity of every line and colour in these Flemish players’ performance, and its effect on the rhythms, that strikes you, especially in their revelatory account of the opening movement. Van Immerseel is, otherwise, quite a sober interpreter, resisting the temptation that besets many conductors to whip up the animatos (and setting a rather slow tempo in the Roman Carnival), but only the Scène aux champs seems to me inauthentically heavy-handed. The finale is electric. The Sunday Times
  


Folk & Country - Artists A to Z

   What I Know

 Quote from James Taylor: “Tom Rush was not only one of my early heroes, but also one of my main influences.”

Born in 1941, Tom was originally a mainstay of the Boston/Cambridge folk/blues scene and cut his first two records in that style in 1963. He helped pioneer folk-rock in the mid-Sixties, then the singer-songwriter genre in the late Sixties. He has released more than a dozen albums; former labels Elektra and Columbia have released a total of three “best-of” compilations. Read More >>
   The Tiffany Transcriptions
For our first-ever exclusive Collectors’ Choice Music boxed set, we’re presenting a series of recordings that changed the face of American country music, and, indeed, American popular music in general. But more on that later. The story behind the Tiffany Transcriptions is this: in 1945, BobWills, Oakland, California disc jockey Cactus Jack and businessman-songwriter Clifford Sundin founded Tiffany Music, Inc. to create a series of transcriptions, pre-packaged radio shows featuringWills and his Texas Playboys.

A steady series of programs, of course, required that Wills and the band record scores of tunes, and not just their hits and their bandstand repertoire. And the extra space afforded by the 16-inch transcription discs as opposed to 78s meant that the band had infinitely more jamming space—and this was a band (most notably vocalist Tommy Duncan, steel guitarists Noel Boggs, Roy Honeycutt and Herb Remington, guitarists Eldon Shamblin and Lester “Junior” Bernard, fiddler/mandolinist Tiny Moore, fiddlers Joe Holley and Louis Tierney, pianist Millard Kelso, banjoist Ocie Stockard, bassist Luke Wills and drummer Johnny Cuviello) that, more than arguably any other outfit in the history of country music, KNEWhow to jam! The result was, as Wills expert Rich Kienzle puts it in his liner notes, “For all the great records Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys made in 1946–47 for Columbia and MGM—and there were plenty—the Tiffany sessions captured something deeper, intangible and vibrant, music that even the occasional miscue or missed note can't diminish. It represents the very soul, spirit and musical passion of Bob and the band as they really were on those Western and Southwestern bandstands. 60 years later, it still sounds like yesterday. Play it loud and listen.

The magic is still there.” These 150 remastered tracks include the debut of the Wills classic Faded Love, torrid versions of jazz classics like St. Louis Blues; C-Jam Blues, and Jumpin’ at the Woodside; early, pre-rock and and artist testimonials from Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel, Ranger Doug from Riders in the Sky and Ashley Kingman from Big Sandy & the Fly-Rite Boys (hey, it’s our first boxed set, we wanted to do it right)! Read More >>