The highlight of this sunny, consistently delightful disc comes in the form of 26 Variations on "La folia di Spagna", based on one of the most famous tunes in Western civilization. A veritable "concerto for orchestra", this late (1815) masterpiece offers a compendium of orchestral tricks of the trade, with brilliant sectional writing, echo effects, and solos for everyone, including (alongside more traditional strings and winds) trombones, harp, and even snare drum. Why it's not an orchestral staple even today simply defies the imagination, and aside from a less-than-seductive principal violin solo, it's brilliantly played here.

On the release date of our Sir Roger Norrington retrospective boxset, we also release his long-lost instrumental recordings of Brahms. Norrington approached this project after recording his Beethoven cycle, wondering if mid-19th-century would fit with his views on historically informed performance: “Tempos spacious but forthright; tempo modification, sensitive but simple; textures clear, as benefits such polyphonic writing; balance restored in favour of the winds…” A definitively original vision that gives these recordings a unique appeal.

André Grétry's Richard Coeur de Lion, or Richard the Lionhearted, lay neglected until 2019 when a production by the Opéra Royal de Versailles was mounted. This album is taken from that performance, and it's very well recorded indeed. The opera was quite well known in its time and was even performed in the young U.S. (in Boston, in 1796), and it's a great find, a real crowd-pleaser as much today as at the end of the 18th century. The story is based on a probably imaginary tale of an episode during Richard's return from the Crusades, when he was imprisoned in Linz, Austria.

This summer, dive with us into the often-overlooked sea of late ‘70s/early ’80s Italian Soul, AOR and Disco. Compiled by journalist, producer and digger extraordinaire David Nerattini (with a little help from our own Pierpaolo De Sanctis), PAISA’ GOT SOUL is the smooth and near-danceable soundtrack to a decade that is somehow still with us. A time of gentle grooves, summer loves and sweet escapism – one beautifully captured by Claude Nori in his photographs of Italian beaches and summer holidays. Welcome to the mood of an era.

Starting in the bebop era, the piano-bass-drums lineup has been the most classic jazz format in which the piano is featured, accumulating the weight of history and critical expectations. In this setting, a non-mainstream player such as Shipp can infiltrate Newport Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and other Establishment bastions in a familiar format and then unleash his ideas on audiences that might not normally be exposed to his style. Thanks to hearing it in the communal language of the piano trio, they can better understand the message the Matthew Shipp Trio has to deliver – “Mr. Shipp’s predilection for finding fertile ground between accessibility and abstraction,” as Larry Blumenfeld wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Do Not Ignore This! This is the highly inventive, original and compelling new album from explosive US quartet Kneebody. The music is adventurous, exuberant and powerful: music for a new generation, music that will inspire and excite, coming from a band with a committed and distinctive sound. From the off, it commands your attention and surprises at every turn. Kneebody are a band with a long history, a deep mutual respect and a dedicated fan base, yet this album marks a new beginning - a new line-up, a new label, and renewed focus. The album is Chapters, an all-encompassing and powerhouse album that mixes deep grooves and deft melodies with a wide range of guests including Becca Stevens, Gretchen Parlato, Michael Mayo and Josh Dion. Chapters is a modern day great!

2020 release. Dare2 Records is thrilled to announce the release of Without Deception, the intimate and adventurous debut recording by the Kenny Barron/Dave Holland Trio featuring Johnathan Blake. The album expands on the fruitful relationship forged by the two jazz icons over the course of more than three decades with the rejuvenating addition of the masterful young drummer.

Although some people might think that the likes of a rediscovered piece of music, one or two mentions of the instrument picked up here and there, a rather startling meeting between the writer and the most famous harpsichordist of the day, along with a metaphor in the guise of an epitaph written by a poetess friend are fairly slender foundations on which to build a programme entitled “A harpsichord for Marcel Proust”, this recording is not about a harpsichord that Marcel Proust had at his home or that belonged to him - it is a harpsichord for Marcel Proust. It is intended as a tribute by a harpsichordist of today to the man who wrote À la Recherche du Temps Perdu and who lived during an all-too-often overlooked period in the instrument’s history.

Nowadays, the Italian repertory of fifteenth-century secular music is better known through the reworkings of visiting foreigners like Isaac and Josquin than by the home-grown article. This recording introduces some of those native idioms and composers: the famous Scaramella tune made famous by Compere and Josquin (assuming that setting is his) appears in its original, monophonic guise; elsewhere, two songs by the frottolist Marchetto Cara set the tone. As with Italian music of later periods, polyphonic textures are deliberately played down to allow for the maximum projection and embellishment of the principal line. A number of non-vocal pieces attest to the preoccupation with instrumental virtuosity, represented by such figures as the lutenist Serafino. Sirinu have been active on the concert circuit for a number of years, but this disc marks their debut as recording artists. The programme is varied, the choice of instrumental combinations judicious and spirited, and the performers’ lightness of touch rests as easily on the ear as the music itself. Lightness is indeed the chief attribute of Sara Stowe’s singing, shown to best effect in pieces like Non e tempo d’aspectare, Scopri, lingua or the possibly scurrilous piece de resistance, Villana.

These works share the common key of E flat major but represent two very different stages in the composer’s life. The Piano Concerto No. 0, WoO 4, written when Beethoven was 13 years old, is one of his earliest works. With the orchestral score lost, this extant version for piano solo written in Beethoven’s hand includes the tutti sections reduced for piano. The radiant ‘Emperor’ Concerto shows the 38-year-old Beethoven at the peak of his creative powers, and remains a glorious example of his spirit triumphing over life’s adversities.

This New York-based psychedelic blues rock quintet featured Ray Kennedy (vocals), Art Del Gudico (guitar), Jerry Guida (organ), Tommy Burns (drums) and Michael Lamont (drums). The band’s debut album largely comprised of contemporary hits, notably ‘Hey Joe’, ‘Morning Dew’ and ‘Come See About Me’. An unknown quantity when they supported Moby Grape on a brief UK tour in 1968, Group Therapy impressed audiences with their exciting, soul-based stage act. The album, retitled You’re In Need Of…Group Therapy was belatedly issued in the wake of this interest, but although their version of ‘River Deep - Mountain High’ garnered interest when issued as a single, the set failed to emulate its corresponding in-concert intensity. The band split up without achieving their potential, although Kennedy later secured success as a singer and songwriter.

The fourth release in Tom Waits' series of skid row travelogues, Small Change proves to be the archetypal album of his '70s work. A jazz trio comprising tenor sax player Lew Tabackin, bassist Jim Hughart, and drummer Shelly Manne, plus an occasional string section, back Waits and his piano on songs steeped in whiskey and atmosphere in which he alternately sings in his broken-beaned drunk's voice (now deeper and overtly influenced by Louis Armstrong) and recites jazzy poetry. It's as if Waits were determined to combine the Humphrey Bogart and Dooley Wilson characters from Casablanca with a dash of On the Road's Dean Moriarty to illuminate a dark world of bars and all-night diners. Of course, he'd been in that world before, but in songs like "The Piano Has Been Drinking" and "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart," Waits gives it its clearest expression…