“Destination Set To Nowhere” is a melting pot, a perfect mix of all the styles the band has crossed and experimented with over the years. Nevertheless, the concept album is kept in their well-known style, spiced up with a futuristic twist. The high-class production adds up to the unbelievably driven sound. “Destination Set To Nowhere” clearly is Vision Divine’s most mature and well produced album up to this point!

Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra / Raymond Leppard - American Dreams: Barber's Adagio & Other American Romantic Masterpieces
Chadwick, Barber, Foote, Carpenter, Canning, Carmichael & Gershwin
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 230 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Decca # 458 157-2 | Country/Year: Europe 1999 | Genre: Classical

…Leppard and his Hoosiers nevertheless do an exquisite job on everything. The orchestral sound itself is beautiful, the shaping of phrases lovely and detailed, and the overall flow of each piece unimpeded. Leppard knows how to tell the musical tale, especially evident in the Gershwin, which can pall in less committed performances. Based on the Chadwick and Foote, I especially want to revisit Leppard's Dvorák and Tchaikovsky.

For those that are not familiar with Renata Scotto in her prime, this DVD should be a revelation. Not only is the voice beautiful but her technique is brilliant. The mad scene is a highlight. If she is not quite as showy with pyrotechnics as Sutherland and Sills, she is still spectacular. The pathos and word pointing she brings to every scene is unique. It confirms why many see her as the rightful successor to Maria Callas. Her Edgardo is Carlo Bergonzi, another paragon of operatic style, who matches her note for note with elegance and beauty of tone…

By OperaLover

The band's second full lenght album ‘Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream’ was also recorded at V.O. Pulver's Little Creek Studio. The twelve new songs turned out to be more melodic and catchy, but still are groovy and aggressive. The album was released through Artist Station Records.

The Finnish Fantasy Metal shooting stars have matured into a renowned act with their unmistakeable, heavy, drivingly fast and highly athmospheric sound. Although you can hear echoes from symphonic, folk, pagan and even thrash metal in their unique sound, they tend to describe their heavy but melodic music as extreme Fantasy Metal. Extreme because of the extreme sounds, dark growls and various influences, and fantasy not only because of the lyrical themes, but also because of the freedom to mix together elements from all different kinds of Metal. With a new album to support Kivimetsän Druidi raise their horns and are ready for the battle once again. This is the first pressing that comes as a Digpak with 2 bonus tracks.

This release places Scott’s early masterpiece, the first Piano Concerto, alongside one of the larger orchestral works composed after the Second World War. Performed here by Howard Shelley, the large scale Piano Concerto was composed immediately before the First World War and premiered by Scott himself, with the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of his friend Sir Thomas Beecham. Scott’s static and exotic harmony, and his use of ostinati, repeated motifs, exotic orchestral colours and the bell-like effect of repeated fourths lend the work an oriental sound world. Scott himself ….

William Bolcom’s ambitious setting of William Blake’s complete Songs of Innocence and Experience for soloists, multiple choral forces, and orchestra occupied the composer on and off, beginning as far back as the late 1950s, with most of the work completed between 1973-74 and 1979-82. The composer’s renowned eclectic bent makes itself felt in the work’s nearly two-and-one-half-hour length. Musical eras, styles, and performance practices leapfrog back and forth in unpredictable progressions, keeping the listener in a constant state of suspense ……

Jed Distler@ClassicsToday.com