Howard Shelley’s fascinating discs of Spohr’s symphonies with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana have reignited interest in a composer who was once the most important in Europe, and particularly so in England, where he was worshipped by all of musical society. Spohr’s Eighth Symphony is one of the composer’s more conservative experiments with the form. The Tenth is the composer’s final symphony and remained unpublished – languishing in the former Prussian State Library in Berlin for many years – until 2006. Both works bring unexpected pleasures. This is the penultimate volume of a series which as a whole is an important historical document of musical taste.

Though the saxophone has never found a regular place in the orchestra it has nevertheless captured the interest of a long line of composers; a square peg doesn't need to fit into any orchestral round hole when it is centre-stage. It is, too, one of the instruments whose technique has been advanced by players of jazz—a field in which John Harle remains active. There are now exponents of awesome ability, worthy of the attention of serious composers such as, in this recording, Bennett—who is also given to crossing the musical tracks.

Frédéric TAVERNIER-VELLAS et Les Solistes de la Musique Byzantine nous entraînent une nouvelle fois dans son voyage autour des chants sacrés de la Méditerranée et nous invite au cœur de la culture andalouse à travers une expérience musicale et spirituelle inédite. Cette Misa Flamenca se développe dans le cadre du rite andalou, chanté en latin et en espagnol, un rite ancien très différent du rite Romain, et elle entre naturellement en dialogue avec le chant Flamenco, à travers des chants traditionnels et des compositions du guitariste Kiko Ruiz, chantées par Matéo Cortès.

Shemekia Copeland has moved her recorded product to the TelArc label, has a new producer in Oliver Wood (who doubles on guitar), and pursues a style that seems more refined and less raucous or bawdy than on her previous recordings. The rough edges are shaved, maturity is settling in, and Copeland seems intent on doing things in a more traditional fashion rather than the stomping, tear-the-house-down approach she built her reputation on. She's using members of Col. Bruce Hampton's band in bassist Ted Pecchio and drummer Tyler Greenwell, occasionally bassist Chris Wood and keyboardist John Medeski from Medeski, Martin & Wood, guitarist Marc Ribot, and on loan from the Derek Trucks Band, keyboardist Kofi Burbridge for three tracks. These musicians liven up the proceedings considerably, and the production values of this effort are leaner and cleaner than her other discs. Copeland herself sounds incredibly focused and basic, far from slick but not dirty or messy on any level, and her themes reflect a current-life viewpoint that is part optimist and part cynic, with a big parcel of pragmatic realist.

February 2023; similar to the trajectory the [CP 277 CD] set has taken, this set covering the entirety of the Electronic & Experimental Music as originally issued in 1969 on Discos Siglo Veinte, the "Private" Imprint of Argentinian critic Jacobo Romano has been on the books for ages (a decade and a half by my count) & it was only recently (after scouring virtually every shop in said country) that copies of all three relevant titles were finally sourced: "Música Electrónica Latinoamericana" (#LP 502), "Phantasie 1967 / Antithese 1962 / Montage 1967 / Pandorasbox" (#JJ 015), & "Núcleos - 1a. Serie / Música / Metapiéce (Mimetics)" (#LP 500) - the contents of the first two appearing here en toto (in this order) followed by "Metapiéce (Mimetics)" (as a bonus cut, essentially) tidily across a single 80-minute disc.

As part of Deutsche Grammophon’s release of a limited and numbered edition of Claudio Abbado’s complete recordings for DG, Decca and Philips, you can now enjoy Volume 12 in a series of 16 digital albums, which are organised in alphabetical order of composer name. This twelfth digital album presents music by Schumann and Tchaikovsky.

Carl Nielsen’s cycle of six symphonies is one of the most original orchestral corpuses of the late Romantic-early Modern era, with its ever-changing tonality, rich orchestration putting emphasis on wind instruments, and constant inventiveness. The Inextinguishable and the Four Temperaments are masterpieces that would be well-worth being performed more often outside Scandinavia.

Jaga Jazzist’s least jazz-rooted, most prog album to date, One-Armed Bandit is not associable with Tortoise and 2000s-era Stereolab merely for the assistance of John McEntire, who mixed it and is credited with analog synth processing. Echoing, at various points, both bands at their most rocking, Baroque, and searching, One-Armed Bandit dazzles early on. Throughout the 13 minutes that make up the title track and the following “Bananfleur Overalt,” the listener is pulled through a suspenseful succession of passages, like a score to a Mediterranean tropical cyclone, that work in tight-riffing bass clarinet, zipping vibraphone, buzzing guitar, sighing pedal steel, dancing harpsichord, and even some distant skronk-sax over galloping and tapping rhythms that switch time signatures with an oddly elegant twitchiness…

Coming from a Black Metal background, their first full length, while already hinting at their fable for Doom Metal and Progressive Rock, shows yet more focus toward the Viking Metal elements in their unique style. The rich songs on this album incorporate the powerful, aggressive potential of their Black Metal roots with their trademark clean male vocals and melodic lead and acoustic guitars into a seamless whole, an album that effortlessly floats between powerfully pounding parts and a relaxed Viking-like campfire atmosphere, with additional progressive elements fit in wherever they add to the wonderful mix. In short, The Flight Of Sleipnir showed right from the start what gifted musicians they are and any fan of their later efforts will certainly love "Algiz + Berkanan" as well.

The third of DG’s series of seven Mozart operas conducted by Yannick Nezet-Seguin and initiated by Rolando Villazon. It was recorded live in the stunning venue of Festspielhaus Baden Baden and features a star cast full of critically-acclaimed artists – including Diana Damrau, the reigning Konstanze of our time – with an extraordinary strong showing of Deutsche Grammophon artists: Anna Prohaska, Rolando Villazon, Thomas Quasthoff and more.

Gioacchino Rossini was born to a family of musicians in 1792. He began writing music at 15 and by 1829 he had written nearly 40 operas and had been the toast of society. He had early success in 1813 with "Tancredi" and in 1816 with "The Barber of Seville" (under the title of "Almaviva"). And while he wrote some songs and sacred works along the way, he won the world over with his operas and concluded with "Guillaume Tell" (William Tell) in 1829. Thereafter, he wrote sacred works and small works for his own delight that he shared with his friends at soirées in his home (they were regular and sought after events between 1857 until his death in 1868). He wrote hundreds of these pieces and would play the piano (he called himself a pianist of the fourth class) for the singers.

In a year of Handel celebration and many new recordings, this is a welcome addition to the discography. Stephen Layton, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a stellar group of soloists—in fact, the best in solo Handel singing that this country has to offer—present a disc of three of the Chandos anthems which is sure to achieve the same critical and public acclaim as the recent Dettingen Te Deum from Trinity.