Dudok Quartet Amsterdam’s catalogue continues to grow with the addition of another brilliant recording, delving into the music of Shostakovich and Saariaho. Shostakovich regarded his 3rd String Quartet as one of his best works and initially gave each of the movements titles such as ‘blithe ignorance of the future cataclysm’ and ‘Forces of war unleashed’, but then withdrew the titles shortly after completing the work. Why he did this we do not know, maybe he was wary of the Soviet authorities reading unpatriotic meanings into them. Whatever the reasons, the 3rd is a powerful statement containing the composer’s dry humour, with a good dash of sarcasm, the sinister and the passionate.

A ’70s music night without Rose Royce would be unthinkable. In soul music terms, it would be like the ’60s without The Temptations, or the ’80s without The Gap Band. That’s because the Los Angeles group played an important role in spreading Disco-Funk. Rose Royce’s music defined by its blend of funky grooves and soft romantic ballads, was part of the soundtrack to those heady days, when the whole world seemed to be a big disco ball dancing through space.
This Rose Royce ‘Definitive Collection’ includes all the extended versions of the biggest hits including the ballads ‘Love Don’t Live Here Anymore’, ‘Wishing On A Star’, ‘I Wanna Get Next To You’ and the Funk anthems ‘Car Wash’, ‘It Makes You Feel Like Dancin’, ‘Is It Love You’re After’ and ‘Do Your Dance’. Also included is the full 12-minute version of ‘RR Express’.

Heldon were one of the quintessential European progressive groups of the 70s. Led by Richard Pinhas they released 7 albums from 1974 to 1979. Some of this is the most mellow and spacey Heldon material, while other parts burn with a nasty intensity. "Allez Teia" (1975) was the second Heldon album - it features Pinhas' trademark instrumental sound: waves of distorted post-Frippian guitars, ARP synthesizers, VCS3, tapes and mellotron into a monstrous, swelling mania. Searing instrumental space music, bridging electronics & psychedelic guitar excess in unique & legendary fashion.

Paavo Järvi and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich present the second volume of their complete Mahler Symphonies, with his First Symphony, known as the "Titan" in reference to the eponymous novel by the poet Jean-Paul that Mahler greatly admired. Although he abandoned this title three years after the symphony's premiere in 1893, the symphony has, like many of Mahler’s works, "a clearly programmatic character" according to Paavo Järvi: "Mahler was a composer who was truly able to explore the inner world of human beings and to question what goes on inside us.”

Notable as one of the U.K.'s first interracial bands, the Equals stormed through the mid-'60s and beyond with songwriting chops, potent live shows, and a sound that fused pop, blues, maximum R&B, and elements of ska and bluebeat. Original vocalist Eddy Grant would go on to a healthy solo career after the Equals splintered in the early '70s, but various versions of the band led by co-founding member Pat Lloyd soldiered on as their early material was discovered by new generations of fans. While 1995's Roots was the last album of new Equals material, cover versions of their '60s singles by the Clash, the Specials, the Detroit Cobras, and others kept interest in the band alive, and multiple collections of their early tunes showed up intermittently, including 2021's revisitation of early songs All the Hits Re-Recorded.

Like his flute-playing uncle Frederick the Great, King Frederick William II (r. 1786–1797) was a keen musical amateur. An avid cellist, he studied with the virtuosi Ludwig Christian Hesse, Carlo Graziani, and Jean-Pierre Duport, the latter of whom he appointed his principal cellist in 1773. He commissioned chamber music from notable composers across Europe, received the dedications of string quartets by Haydn and Mozart, and sometimes performed as a member of his own court orchestra. Months before acceding to the throne, he hired perhaps the finest cellist of his age, Luigi Boccherini, as his court composer. Boccherini served the court in absentia from Madrid, dispatching twelve new works per year to the Prussian monarch. Given the king’s insatiable appetite for cello music, it is no accident that Beethoven composed his first two sonatas for cello and piano during his brief but rewarding stay in Berlin.

Romanticism had many faces. Mozart’s spirit still floated through musical life and Beethoven’s mighty music set the benchmark for every Romantic composer. Mozart’s legacy was carried forward by two great pianists: Hummel, a pupil of Mozart, and Ries, a pupil of Beethoven. They each steered Romanticism in a different direction. Newspapers across Europe wrote of the ‘wild Romanticism’ of the bohemian Ries, now seen as a forerunner of Schumann. Meanwhile, the virtuoso Hummel enchanted and astonished his audiences. Around 1815, at the time of the Congress of Vienna, he was the most famous pianist in the world and Liszt was crazy about his music. Schubert, by contrast, was the creator and embodiment of personal expressiveness in the Romantic era. He performed only in private circles and had no interest in empty virtuosity, even though he was a superb pianist whose instrument, according to contemporaries, would sing under his hands.

Someone once asked me: is there not an end to Christmas songs? The answer is simple: no, there is not.

The album Play unites, for the first time, two of the most important American musicians of the current generation charting new paths in jazz and way beyond: trumpeter Theo Croker and pianist Sullivan Fortner. The two have known each other for more than 20 years, but Play is their first recording as joint leaders.

There are albums that arrive like gusts of wind, reshaping landscapes, and there are albums that fall like snow, quietly, imperceptibly, until you realize the ground has been entirely transformed. Bugge Wesseltoft’s It’s Snowing on My Piano was one such album. Released in 1997 on ACT Records, it slipped almost modestly into the holiday season, offering not bombast but restraint, not cheer but reflection. To everyone’s surprise, including the pianist’s own, it became one of the label’s defining successes, an unlikely seasonal classic across Europe.

The ARC Ensemble’s Music in Exile series continues with this exploration of chamber works by Ernest Kanitz.
Born into a wealthy Viennese family in 1894, he was encouraged in music by his mother, started piano lessons aged seven, and was composing within a year. Persuaded by his parents to study for a degree in Law, Kanitz also studied piano, music theory, and composition (with Franz Schreker, who also served as a mentor). His reputation grew steadily, his works promoted by conductors such as George Szell and Clemens Krauss. In 1922 he gained a position as a teacher at the New Vienna Conservatory, and in 1930 established the Vienna Women’s Chamber Choir, which quickly gained a reputation across Europe for its performances of Kodály, Honegger, and Stravinsky (as well as Kanitz!). Although he had converted to Christianity in 1914, his Jewish ancestry necessitated emigration from Austria in 1938, following the annexation of Austria by National Socialist Germany. After a short spell in New York, Kanitz and his wife, Gertrude, moved to Rock Hill, South Carolina, where he had secured a teaching position. Following Gertrude’s early death from cancer, Kanitz moved to California, where he established a successful teaching career at the University of Southern California.

This is the second album of the Saint-Saëns series with young talents​. All recordings were made with the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, conducted by Howard Griffiths.​The repertoire contains: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in G minor op. 22, Morceau de Concert in F minor op. 94, Romance in F major op. 36, Romance in E major op. 67 and Suite for Violoncello and Orchestra op. 16b​

Easily the weirdest record the Tony Williams Lifetime ever released, 1971's Ego is an experimental blend of post-hard bop jazz and the spacier end of psychedelic rock. Larry Young's wafting organ parts and Ted Dunbar's rockist guitar (as opposed to the more traditional jazz bent of the guy he replaced, John McLaughin) combine to make parts of the album sound like Atom Heart Mother-era Pink Floyd, particularly on "There Comes a Time" and "Lonesome Wells (Gwendy Trio)." Unfortunately, both of those tracks are bogged down by Williams' own earnest and not terribly inspired verses. The best tracks are those that dispense with the lyrical claptrap - the liner notes are also a terribly dated hoot - and get down to the creation of some roiling atmospheres and powerful group improvisation…

Rock Bottom, recorded with a star-studded cast of Canterbury musicians, has been deservedly acclaimed as one of the finest art rock albums. Several forces surrounding Wyatt's life helped shape its outcome. First, it was recorded after the former Soft Machine drummer and singer fell out of a five-story window and broke his spine. Legend had it that the album was a chronicle of his stay in the hospital. Wyatt dispels this notion in the liner notes of the 1997 Thirsty Ear reissue of the album, as well as the book Wrong Movements: A Robert Wyatt History. Much of the material was composed prior to his accident in anticipation of rehearsals of a new lineup of Matching Mole. The writing was completed in the hospital, where Wyatt realized that he would now need to sing more, since he could no longer be solely the drummer. Many of Rock Bottom's songs are very personal and introspective love songs, since he would soon marry Alfreda Benge…

The New Composers who set standards in the Russian Techno and Ambient scene now collaborate with a man who invented Ambient music in the early 80ies, Brian Eno. The music varies between the piano - charme of a russian ballet studio, pure ambience and environmental music as well as 80ies electronic instrumental and 50ies "Fokstrot" music. Simply incredible how homogenous this mixture of different musical influences sounds and which kind of special atmosphere and sound this music out of Russia has.