The Czech Philharmonic and it's Chief Conductor and Music Director Semyon Bychkov present a new recording of Bedrich Smetana's masterpiece Ma vlast (My Homeland). The album celebrates both the bicentenary of Smetana's birth and, the start of 2024's Year of Czech Music which has been celebrated every ten years since Smetana's 100th anniversary in 1924. Ma vlast (1874-1878) is a potent symbol of the Czech Republic's turbulent political history and has played an important role in the Czech national movement. Contemplating the landscape, history, and legends of Bohemia, Ma vlast is best known for it's world-famous Moldau melody.

From their beginnings as an attempt at bold jazz-rock fusion in 1967 through a run as a high-powered R&B/soul-rock singles act with singer David Clayton-Thomas two years later, Blood, Sweat & Tears were always a kind of fascinating experiment, and a commercially successful one at that. The first album from the Clayton-Thomas-fronted band appeared in 1969, spawned four high chart hits, won a Grammy as Album of the Year, and went on to sell some three million units. The next two albums, Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 and 4, generated a few more hits, but the band was gradually running out of creative steam by this point, and when Clayton-Thomas left the group after the fourth album, well, that was the end of the line commercially for Blood, Sweat & Tears. A jazzier, but definitely not as commercial, version of Blood, Sweat & Tears showed up for two of the albums collected in this set, 1972's New Blood and 1973's No Sweat, with the third album here, 1976's More Than Ever, featuring the return of David Clayton-Thomas to the fold.

Just like the title says – 17 of Fricke's biggest hits from her the early '80s, including the number ones "He's A Heartache (Looking for a Place to Happen)", "It Ain't Easy Bein' Easy", "Don' Worry 'Bout Me Baby", and "Your Heart's Not In It".

Under the direction of the Dresden cross organist Holger Gehring, experienced musicians have teamed up to interpret these works in a way as close as possible to the original. The recording is based on detailed research that reconstructs both the original decoration art and tempo selection as well as the original mood. The so-called lying organ of the Kreuzkirche Dresden is used. This also meets the historical performance situation where the concerting composer conducted the orchestra from a specially made organ with lying pipes. This creates an extraordinarily interesting view of Handel's work in London.

Bruhns was one of Buxtehude’s most talented pupils, impressing his contemporaries with his skills as an organist just as much as with his talents as a violinist and as a singer. He died at the age of 32, leaving five organ pieces (RIC204) and twelve sublime Cantatas that form an evident link between Buxtehude’s religious music and J.S. Bach’s. This programme is rounded off with the cantata Erbarm dich by Lovies Busbetsky, another Buxtehude pupil, which formed the inspiration for one of J.S. Bach’s chorale preludes.

These six Quartets for flute, violin, viola/viola da gamba and continuo are puzzling on almost all counts. Though printed in Paris in 1752 they are not part of the genuine ‘Paris Quartet’ set of 1738. Nor are they incontrovertibly the work of Telemann. But on stylistic grounds it does seem likely, though we should not rule out an imitator, French perhaps, who in collusion with the publisher saw an opportunity to make some money following the enormous success of Telemann’s Paris visit in 1737-8.