Four Seasons of Love is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Donna Summer. Released on October 11, 1976, this concept album became her third consecutive successful album to be certified gold in the US. It peaked at #29 on the Billboard 200. In addition, all the cuts on this album went to number one on the disco chart.
This was the third concept album Summer had made, though unlike the previous two which had contained one long track on side one and a small selection of slightly shorter ones on side two, Four Seasons of Love was more equally balanced.

Ivan Ilić came across these transcriptions, scarcely known at all, through the most unlikely and serendipitous sequence of events. Carl David Stegmann (1751-1826) was a tenor, keyboard player, conductor, and composer, who worked mostly in the field of opera. Employed by the Court Theatre in Mainz (where he sang in the first German-language production of Don Giovanni), he also gave a number of acclaimed performances in Frankfurt. Trained as an organist, he made transcriptions of string quintets by Mozart and Beethovens Trios, Op. 9 as well as keyboard transcriptions of twenty-five of Haydns symphonies. Ivan Ilić writes: It is unclear to me whether these transcriptions were ever meant to be played as concert repertoire, in public. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm I have encountered wherever I have played them has persuaded me to make this recording, to allow more people to hear Stegmann's idiomatic arrangements.

Montreal-based since 1998, Airat Ichmouratov (b. 1973) traces his musical roots back to the dominant culture in his native Tatarstan in Soviet times: It was definitely the Russian school of composers, he says, without rancour. Im influenced to this day by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky. My own musical style has evolved out of this rich heritage. Theres more. The Volga Tatar-born Russian-Canadian composer learned to play klezmer music while busking, together with his viola-playing wife, as new immigrants on the streets and Métro of Montreal. Ive been touring the world for twenty years as a clarinettist with the Montreal band Kleztory and find myself, a Muslim-born musician, playing klezmer. This, too, is now a distinctive part of my musical language.

Gottfried Finger was a Moravian composer and virtuoso viol player. Born in Olomouc, in the modern-day Czech Republic, and arriving in England in 1685, Finger worked for the court of James II before becoming a freelance composer.

Born within a couple of years of each other, Gottfried Silbermann and Johann Sebastian Bach were acquainted, and we know that Silbermann in 1736 invited the composer to inaugurate the new organ that he had built in Dresden’s Frauenkirche. That instrument was destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in 1945, but some thirty of Silbermann’s organs are still extant. From robust pedal stops providing a sturdy bass fundament to silvery flute stops, his instruments were famous for their distinctive sound and contemporary sources often made use of a play on the name of their maker as they praised their ‘Silberklang’.

Love to Love You Baby is the second studio album by American singer Donna Summer, released on August 27, 1975 and her first to be released internationally and in the United States.
"Love to Love You Baby" was Summer's first single and first hit in America, reaching #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in early 1976. It also became her first number-one Hot Dance Club Play Chart hit.

Violin music isn’t what one normally associates with Franz Schubert, but he did in fact receive his first violin lessons as a young boy from his father. At the age of 11 he was accepted as a member of the choir of the imperial court chapel, and as such became a pupil at the Stadtkonvikt School. There he joined the excellent student orchestra, eventually assuming the role of leader. Among his examiners was the court Kapellmeister Anton Salieri, who took a keen interest in Schubert’s compositions.

At the end of the 16th century, the pursuit of greater, more vivid expressivity dominated music-making all across Italy, taking madrigals and other vocal ensemble forms as its starting point but soon going on to explore the possibilities offered by solo singing. For some decades the theorbo (or chitarone, as it was also called) was regarded as the ideal instrument for accompanying singers, but as a leading exponent of the instrument Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger soon also established it as a solo instrument in its own right.

The shimmering string harmonics at the opening of Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony bring to mind the suspended breath of spring, and will have signalled even to the very first audiences that a new symphonic era was being ushered in. Soon enough the composer introduces some of the elements that would become key components of his musical language: sounds of nature (here cuckoo calls) are combined with quasi-militaristic fanfares and ‘high-art’ chromatic wanderings in cellos, as if to illustrate Mahler’s view of the symphony as an all-embracing art form.

Aux armes et cætera - Dub Style est un double album de Serge Gainsbourg revisité par le musicien français Bruno Blum. Il contient de nouveaux mixages des enregistrements originaux de 1979 produits par Philippe Lerichomme, ainsi que des versions dub et des variations interprétées par des chanteurs et DJ jamaïcains.

The Italian composer Gioachino Rossini is best known for his operas. Many of their overtures and arias were catchy tunes at the time and have remained so to this day. Although it is Rossini’s comic operas that are primarily performed today, more than half of his stage works are in fact based on serious themes. One veritable rarity is the stage work "Sigismondo", which premiered in 1814 at the famous Teatro La Fenice in Venice but was only ever rarely performed afterwards.

Critics say "cellist Brian Thornton and pianist Spencer Myer are a match made in heaven. They play as one body, one spirit, and one soul." Their third collaboration for Steinway & Sons features passionate performances of works by the great Romantic composer, Robert Schumann. Brian Thornton is a multi-faceted musician who has touched the lives of thousands of people through his performances commemorating his teacher, Lev Aronson, and through musical outreach programs around the world. He is founder of the Aronson Cello Festival, which over the years has grown to include musicians, artists, filmmakers, poets, writers, composers, conductors, educators, and many passionate supporters of the arts.

Making their first appearance on BIS, Margaret Batjer and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) cross great distances in both time and space in this programme of concertante violin works. The disc opens with a Violin Concerto by the American composer Pierre Jalbert (b. 1967), whose music has been described as ‘rich in instrumental color and harmonically engaging’. Composed in 2017, the 26-minute concerto was a commission from the orchestra and here makes its first recorded appearance.

The name of Walter Willson Cobbett (1847–1937) is synonymous with chamber music from the first half of the twentieth century – his contribution to the genre was immense, particularly through his many commissions and the prize for chamber music that bore his name.

Sonora Slocum was appointed Principal Flute of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in 2012 at the age of 22 and has performed with orchestras around the country including guest principal flute with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. She has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra on flute and piccolo. Her collaborations as guest principal include touring and audio recordings with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as well as visual recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra of New York at Lincoln Center. Slocum has worked under such renowned conductors as Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, Sir Simon Rattle, Edo de Waart, Otto-Werner Mueller, John Williams, and David Zinman, among many others.