Digitally remastered and expanded two CD edition. Formed in Bristol in 1969, Stackridge were one of the most unique British bands of the era. Their initial line-up featured Andy Davis (guitar, keyboards, vocals), James Warren (guitar, vocals), James "Crun" Walter (bass), Michael "Mutter" Slater (flute, vocals), Michael Evans (violin) and Billy Bent (drums). Stackridge underwent a series of line-up changes and signed to Elton John's newly established Rocket Records label, releasing the album Extravaganza in 1975. The following year, they recorded their final album of the 1970s, the conceptual Mr Mick. The original version of the album featured a story and narration and was rejected by Rocket Records and the band were forced to prepare a different version of the record for release in 1976. This Esoteric Recordings edition has been expanded to include the original version of the album as originally planned by the band.

The human factor determines the path. The Clarinet Trio op. 114 by Johannes Brahms more or less represents the DNA of the Quantum Clarinet Trio, and the piece was one of the driving forces behind the founding of this young chamber ensemble, whose members first met at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg in 2014. At that time, Italian clarinettist Elena Veronesi had been searching for fellow musicians to collaborate in a late work trio, and she found them in the German cellist Johannes Przygodda and Korean pianist Bokyung Kim.

With this album, fittingly entitled Traum der Jugend, the young musicians of Kebyart see a longstanding dream come true. Drawn by its eagerness to reveal new soundworlds, the saxophone quartet has interwoven works from different epochs and given them a new, unconventional guise through its own arrangements. Taking Jörg Widmann’s 7 Capricci as a starting point – a work specially written for the quartet which sparked the idea of this recording – Kebyart draws a myriad of musical connections that journey from Felix Mendelssohn, one of Widmann’s favourite composers, to Johann Sebastian Bach, himself a source of inspiration to Mendelssohn. The programme culminates with a tribute to Fanny Mendelssohn, whose skilful compositions played a key role in developing the musical personality of her brother Felix.

In earlier times, adaptations and rearrangements of their own works or those of others formed an integral part of the daily lives of musicians and composers. So-called ‘historically informed’ performance practice, which has developed out of a strictly historical perspective on past eras of music, long left this way of treating an existing composition almost totally unexplored. Today, however, it is enjoying a renaissance and is part of a musician’s training. The idea of arranging Bach’s works is a natural one, since the composer himself was an inveterate transcriber. Most of the programme recorded here consists of solo keyboard works rescored for a chamber formation – in other words, the performers have chosen an approach that is the contrary of Bach’s usual practice.

Second Symphony is also a youthful work – the composer was just 21 at the time – but it differs from the First in that it’s cast in a single movement. After the premiere in 1973 Aho decided to rework the middle section, a task he didn’t attempt until 1995. The result is a compact, tightly structured piece – it’s a triple fugue – which the composer candidly admits was intended as an antidote to some of the more ‘difficult’ music of the 1960s.

Here the Finnish ensemble Oliphant devotes a program to Gace Brulé, one of the most highly esteemed trouvères (medieval poet/musicians who flourished in the north of France) of his day. Like nearly all trouvères during this period, Brulé entertained at various courts, writing verse and composing songs strictly about secular love. More often than not Brulé wantonly celebrates it–such as in soprano Uli Korhonen’s lovely a cappella “Fine Amours est de tel Force Establie” (The Power of Noble Love is so Great). More atypical (and fascinating) is the program’s centerpiece, “L’Autrier Estoie en un Vergier” (One Day in a Garden), where the complexity of the subject becomes more ambiguous.

Two late, great Vaughan Williams symphonies: with the ‘Antartica’ and No 9, Martyn Brabbins and his BBC forces complete a cycle enthusiastically acclaimed by Radio 3 Record Review as ‘unmissable’.