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23094. (Hec­tor Berlioz) Les nuits d’été [s. Kiri te Kanawa]
23095. (Hec­tor Berlioz) Le mort de Cléopâtre, Scène lyrique [s. Norman]
23096. (Mem­phis Slim) Beer Drinkin’ Woman [Blues Col­lec­tion #13]
23097. (George Fred­er­ick Hän­del) Fara­mon­do, Opera in 3 Acts [d. Palmer; For­tu­na­to, Baird] Read more »

The sin­fo­nia con­cer­tante is a form that sits a lit­tle uncom­fort­ably between the sym­pho­ny and the con­cer­to. Instead of a solo instru­ment bat­tling hero­ical­ly with or against the orches­tra, a con­cer­tante of var­i­ous instru­ments (usu­al­ly three or four) play solo parts in con­ver­sa­tion against the back­drop of the orches­tra. This def­i­n­i­tion has fuzzy edges, and many works might be clas­si­fied as sin­fo­nia con­cer­tante which are named some­thing else. The term is usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the late baroque peri­od, and Haydn com­posed three of them. Among them is his Sin­fo­nia Con­cer­tante in B‑flat, Hob. I/105, com­posed in 1792, which is a fine exem­plar. Vio­lin, cel­lo, oboe and bas­soon per­form the “solo” roles in this one. The “con­ver­sa­tion” seems like a pleas­ant one, as if the instru­ments were relax­ing with brandy and cig­ars after a fine din­ner. The vio­la’s voice, par­tic­u­lar­ly, comes across as mel­low, but nev­er maudlin. In fact, I think the best time to lis­ten to this would be pre­cise­ly in those phys­i­cal circumstances.

23046. (Ella Fitzger­ald) Ella Fitzger­ald Sings the Gersh­win Songbook
23047. (Pat Methe­ny & Lyle Mays) As Falls Wichi­ta, So Falls Wichi­ta Falls
23048. (Albert King & Otis Rush) Door to Door Read more »

I’ve been fond of Juno Reac­tor’s eclec­tic elec­tronica since I first heard Beyond the Infi­nite in 1996. I’ve lis­tened to most of their albums fre­quent­ly, espe­cial­ly Bible of Dreams. But I pret­ty much for­got about their first release, Trans­mis­sions (1993). Revis­it­ing it now, I see why. It has lit­tle of the input from world musi­cal tra­di­tions that they became famous for. It now sounds pret­ty much like con­ven­tion­al trance poised some­where between dark­rave and goa trance. But in fact, it was a pio­neer­ing work from which these trends sub­se­quent­ly evolved. It still plays well, and does­n’t deserve to be entire­ly ignored, just because the group went on to devel­op a more sophis­ti­cat­ed sound.