Quando ancora l'attività compositiva solitamente portava con sé precisi caratteri stilistici tipici della cultura cittadina in cui i compositori - quanto meno - operavano, l'eccellente violinista Giuseppe Matteo Alberti (1685-1751) guardò oltre la siepe e oggi gli è riconosciuto il merito di avere per primo adottato alcuni stilemi del linguaggio vivaldiano al di fuori dell'ambiente veneziano. I dati anagrafici di Alberti sono sovrapponibili, come si vede, a quelli di J.S. Bach, ma a lui non arrise la grandezza creativa e la fortuna (tarda) del Cantor: Bologna, S. Petronio, l'Accademia Filarmonica della sua città - di cui per qualche anno fu "Principe" - le sale del conte Orazio Bargellini per il quale curò l'attività musicale, furono lo scenario che egli calcò da protagonista, in una tranquilla gestione della vita musicale bolognese dalla quale trasse qualche gratificazione, qualche onore, ma pochi quattrini, se è vero che morì rispettato ma povero, anzi "miserabile", secondo Giacomo A. Perti.

Portuguese music enjoyed its most spectacular flowering in the early seventeenth century. Many of the greatest composers were gathered in the capital Lisbon, and this was a period when many Portuguese musicians also made their careers in Spain, which was then linked to Portugal politically. This recording presents masterpieces of Portuguese polyphony from Lisbon and Granada brought to light by the choir’s director, Owen Rees. The Lisbon composers represented are Duarte Lobo (chapelmaster at the Cathedral), Pedro de Cristo (chapelmaster at the Monastery of São Vicente), and Manuel Rodrigues Coelho (organist at the Royal Chapel).

This 2004 survey of modern settings of the medieval sequence Stabat Mater Dolorosa is part of conductor Marcello Viotti's project to record the little-known but worthy sacred works of the twentieth century, in conjunction with the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Chorus for their concert series Paradisi gloria. The four works by Francis Poulenc, Karol Szymanowski, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Wolfgang Rihm are dramatically different in conception and musical content, and may be regarded more as reflections of personal faith than as practical works for ecclesiastical purposes.

The Best of Clannad: In a Lifetime is a greatest hits compilation album by Irish folk group Clannad. It contains two new tracks, "Christmas Angels" and "What Will I Do", the latter of which is on the soundtrack to the Kevin Costner film Message in a Bottle. 2003 UK Limited Edition 26-track 2-CD album set comprising of 18-track CD including Theme From Harrys Game In A Lifetime - featuring Bono & duets with Paul Young & Bruce Hornsby plus BONUS 8-track CD featuring their most laid-back tracks & 3 previously unreleased chilled-out remixes & Saltwater by Chicane.

Most of the albums that Nat Adderley recorded in the '60s employed a saxophonist; Yusef Lateef, Joe Henderson and Charlie Rouse were among the tenor heavyweights he featured. But Naturally! is an exception to that rule. Produced by Orrin Keepnews for Jazzland in 1961, Naturally! was the cornetist's first album of quartet performances. Adderley uses two different rhythm sections on this date. One consists of three players he knew from brother Cannonball's group: bassist Sam Jones, drummer Louis Hayes, and pianist Joe Zawinul (nine years before Weather Report).

Instrumental transcriptions of Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard music have been legion witness just how many there are of The Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue and yet very few of them seem to catch on. One notable exception is violinist and conductor Dmitry Sitkovetsky's 1985 trio arrangement of the Goldberg Variations, made to observe Bach's tercentenary and as a memorial to pianist Glenn Gould, more readily associated with the Goldbergs than perhaps any other musician aside from Johann Gottlieb Goldberg himself.

Live In Suomi Finland is the 2007 album by Finnish experimental rock band Pharaoh Overlord. True to its title, this is a live album recorded in Suomi, Finland. Vivo is the label for this baby.

#4 is the 2006 album by Finnish experimental rockers Pharaoh Overlord. This is the band's fourth studio album, released by Ektro.

#3 is the 2005 album by Finnish experimental rock band Pharaoh Overlord. True to its title, this was the group's third studio album, released on the Ektro label.

One might be forgiven for initially thinking that this recital featuring works for cello and piano by Franz Schubert, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg was, well, a stunt. After all, aside from their birth in the city of Vienna, what do the three composers have in common? Schubert was the quintessential master of lyrical Austro-German romanticism, while Webern and Berg were two of the three most reviled masters of atonal Austro-German expressionism – the third, of course, was Arnold Schoenberg – and one might think they'd be an impossible coupling.

This is a highly enjoyable laid back album with the husbnad and wife team of Jim Tomlinson and Stacey Kent taking centre stage here.With this album Tomlinson and his band do more than just provide backing music for Stacey's vocals with Tomlinson playing some mellow Getz like tenor solos and David Newton contributing a few nice swinging piano solos.Kent doesn't possess the most powerfull of voices but,as always,puts what she has to the best possible use here using that sweet natured swinging style to great effect.

Acclaimed indie band from Seattle with an earthy, harmony-rich sound influenced by American country-rock and British folk-rock. Collection includes: 'Sun Giant' (2008) EP, 'Fleet Foxes' (2008), and 'Helplessness Blues' (2011).

This ambitious and beautifully produced two-CD set includes nearly all of Iannis Xenakis' chamber music for strings, piano, and strings and piano combined. Chamber music constituted a small part of the composer's output, since large ensembles and large forms were vehicles more commensurate with the aesthetic of his monumental, granitic music. There are no small pieces here, though; in each of these works, ranging from solos to a quintet for piano and strings, Xenakis was able to express his uncompromising vision no less ferociously than in his orchestral works. While all of the pieces have an elemental character, many with a visceral punch, the actual sound of the music is surprisingly varied, and the individual works have distinctive and individual characters. In spite of the weightiness and rigor of the music, the tone is not necessarily heavy, and some pieces, like Evryali for piano and Dikhthas for violin and piano, have moments of what could almost be described as whimsicality.

Stephen Hough has the ample virtuoso credentials to excel in these demanding exemplars of Romantic piano music. Only rarely do we miss the rhetorical flourishes or the big, burnished tone and philosophical depth of an Arrau, but this is a first-rate reading of wonderful piano music. Hough's performance of "Vallé d'Obermann," the longest by far of the Swiss book of the Années, is played like the large-scale tone poem it is, and he fully conveys the work's meditation on nature's mysteries. His tempo freedoms in "Au bord d'une source" help make this astounding "water music" a miracle of color and mood. Throughout, Hough's fleet fingers dazzle in the difficult passages and his tonal subtleties reflect the poetry in these nine pieces.

Although Alessandro Scarlatti's popularity today lags behind that of his son Domenico, he was an acclaimed and well-known composer at the time of his death in 1725. Every now and then, a new recording comes along to remind us of why he deserved his accolades. The present one focuses on concertante music for recorder – the booklet note uses the words "flute" and "recorder" interchangeably – with or without additional recorders or solo violins.