Wolf Rune, a solo album, casts a new light on the highly personal idiom of Sinikka Langeland, kantele player and folk singer from Finnskogen, Norway’s “Finnish forest”. Sinikka integrates her own songs among folk hymns, shamanistic rune songs and traditional dance pieces, draws texts from multiple poetic sources, and expands the expressive range of her instruments. Few artists embody the spirit of place as comprehensively as Langeland, and her music ruminates upon the wildness of the natural world and the interrelationships of its inhabitants. Wolf Rune, recorded in December 2019 in Oslo’s Rainbow Studio, is an absorbing addition to Sinikka’s ECM discography, which has featured critically acclaimed projects including Starflowers, The Land That Is Not, Maria’s Song, The Half-Finished Heaven and The Magical Forest.

Still today, an area of shadow, sorely in need of illumination, continues to surround the piano output of various composers living between the end of the 18th and start of the 19th centuries, indisputable protagonists at the keyboard and creators of new aesthetics in the period in which they lived, forgotten with their death and rarely considered by posterity if not within limited and unjust boundaries. They are considered almost unapproachable, even negligible, because of a critical vision incapable of seeing, broadly speaking, beyond the established triads: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven for Classicism, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt for early Romanticism.

This discographic work completes the previous Tactus album (TC871380) dedicated to the complete organ works by Ulysses Matthey, famous concert artist and teacher of the Italian historical twentieth century. After the original works, the organist Fausto Caporali – using period instruments – tackles the complete execution of the organ transcriptions in this double CD. The album is including pages of virtuosity and meditation, from the famous Chaconne in D minor by Bach for solo violin (a fascinating ”lighthouse” for many composers) to the symphonic pages of Liszt, Berlioz, Debussy, Grieg and Wagner, passing through Geminiani and Paganini. Matthey”s compositional refinement finds fertile ground in the organ adaptation of sublime pages of musical history, thanks to his experience as an instrument tester and over two thousand concerts held throughout Europe during his incredible career.

World Premiere: First complete recording of the preserved works of R. Popma van Oevering! The highly talented young composer from Leeuwarden in the Dutch province of Friesland presented his opus 1 in around 1710. It was immediately published in Amsterdam and, as a result, its fame spread even to the circle around Bach. It can even be assumed that Bach let himself be inspired by these six “English” suites.

Recording ‘Cornerstones – Chamber Music Masterpieces’ has been a labour of love, allowing me to revisit music I first encountered in my student days. Written between 1899 and 1957, these works are not simply trumpet pieces with piano accompaniment, but rather chamber music masterpieces, requiring a true collaboration between trumpeter and pianist. Luisa’s enthusiasm for these cornerstones of any trumpet player’s repertoire has been inspiring, and indeed deepened my understanding of, and appreciation for, this music I have known and loved for so long.

The six Cello Suites, BWV 1007–1012, are suites for unaccompanied cello by Johann Sebastian Bach. They are some of the most frequently performed solo compositions ever written for cello. Bach most likely composed them during the period 1717–1723, when he served as Kapellmeister in Köthen. The title given on the cover of the Anna Magdalena Bach manuscript was Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso (Suites for cello solo without bass).

Of all Robert Cray albums, over a career that has now spanned 20 years, this is the one I keep coming back to time and time again. I Was Warned is not one of Robert Cray's more critically acclaimed or commercially successful albums, yet for me it's a handsome, undemanding record that is full of great songs and superb playing. As a practitioner of the blues, Cray has been instrumental in it's re-emergence as a popular art-form in the 80's and 90's, however he has never considered himself to be a 'bluesman' - preferring to call his sound a blues/soul/rock hybrid. I Was Warned tends towards soul and rock. There is a definite feel-good factor to 'Just A Loser' and 'I'm A Good Man', both carry an irresistable groove and Cray clearly revels in his everyman tales of love and life. 'The Price I Pay' is a meditation on fading love, it is one of Cray's finest ballads - a side of his music that seems to get overlooked. 'On The Road Down' is blisteringly good also and showcases some fine guitar-work.

The release of re-mastered editions of the James Bond scores offered up some great albums that expanded the original soundtracks with extra cues ("Thunderball" and "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" are particularly superb). However, "Moonraker," one of the best scores of the series and one of the most lyrical and unusual (especially when you consider what a silly slapstick film it accompanies) arrived on CD in a bare-bones 30-minute edition that replicates the original LP version with no extra tracks.