A wonderful live set from Joao Gilberto - very intimate, with a spare, stripped down quality that shows him at his best! The album features Joao on acoustic guitar and vocals - with no other backing, holding up a wealth of emotion and fragile beauty with a few simple moves of his hand and voice, in that incredible way that few other bossa players ever managed to match!

Appearing as it did in 1973, Area's debut album must have sounded to the average Italian pop critics like the end of the world. Issued on the Cramps label, the album highlighted Area's early sound, which featured overt folk melodies, Canterbury Scene prog rock, acid psychedelia, and vanguard jazz all filtered through a particularly Italian sensibility.
Those who came to love PFM later will not be able to handle the beautiful - yet very disciplined - weirdness of Area, at least on this disc. The Soft Machine comparisons are inevitable, especially in the free jazz sax blowing of Victor Eduardo Busnello. But in the deep funky guitarism of Paolo Trofani and rock-steady rhythmic invention of Patrick Djivasa on bass and Guido Capiozzo on drums, this band, fronted by keyboardist Patrizio Fariselli and vocalist-from-Mars Demetrio Stratos, Area was, at least in this early stage…

Maretimo Records is a German record label, music publisher & radio station, specialized in the styles: Lounge, Chillout, Latin & House Music. The company was founded by the multiple award-winning DJ Michael Maretimo. For more than 25 years he stands with great passion at the mixing desk.

British acoustic pop band who recorded an EP for Ann Marie's Shields' Morpheus Records label and the song 27 Women was featured on a Tic Tac ad campaign. In 2001 they recorded their debut album which due to the break up of the band, shortly after these sessions, never got released until 2013. Their lead vocalist Sarah Joyce went on to find major success as Rumer.

How do you characterize a voice like this? The "official" description is "contralto", but no way is Richard Tucker Award-winner Stephanie Blythe a contralto in any conventional sense. This is a voice so versatile that in her opening "Ombra mai fu" (and in many other places) you'd swear that you were listening to one of today's new breed of countertenors–specifically David Daniels, who coincidentally records for the same label and appears on this program in a duet from Handel's Giulio Cesare. (In fact, their voices are so perfectly matched that when they sing together it's nearly impossible to tell them apart.)

An ideal constellation: 2009 marked Haydn's anniversary year as well as Nikolaus Harnoncourt's 80th birthday. For this occasion the maestro chose 'Il Mondo della Luna', a delicious mixture of satire, comedy and science fiction based on a popular comedy by Carlo Goldoni. Haydn's music unleashes a display of fireworks performed with irresistible energy by Harnoncourt and his ensemble. Renowned actor and director Tobias Moretti relates the story as a magical fairy tale infused with slapstick and fantasy costumes.

Eduard van Beinum's 1958 account of the Water Music captures the magnificent wind section of the Concertgebouw Orchestra at its early post-War peak, and rather than fuss over every phrase and rhythm, as so many of today's "authenticists" do, Beinum offers lively harmonic and rhythmic support while encouraging his nonpareil players to really enjoy themselves–and do they ever! Listen to the those magnificently brazen but always golden-toned horns at the opening of the Menuet (Pomposo), the brilliant trumpets in the famous Alla Hornpipe, and the soulful oboes and bassoons in their many solo turns (the oboist in the Adagio e staccato deserves a standing ovation for that movement alone).