This may be the greatest unissued first album ever to surface from a major band. The story behind the 78 minutes of music on this CD, cut two years before Lynyrd Skynyrd's official debut album, could fill a chapter of a book. Cut primarily during late June and late July of 1971, with a quintet of 1972-vintage tracks added, they constitute Skynyrd's complete studio recordings from the period when they were still trying to get signed and were playing lots of small-time local gigs for barely enough money to live on.

Lynyrd Skynyrd is the definitive Southern rock band, fusing the overdriven power of blues-rock with a rebellious Southern image and a hard rock swagger. Skynyrd never relied on the jazzy improvisations of the Allman Brothers. Instead, they were a hard-living, hard-driving rock & roll band. They may have jammed endlessly on-stage, but their music remained firmly entrenched in blues, rock, and country. Throughout the band's early records, frontman Ronnie Van Zant demonstrated a knack for lyrical detail and a down-to-earth honesty that had more in common with country than rock & roll.

This is the first recording from the distinguished Choir of Chichester Cathedral on Regent, and celebrates the 400 years since Weelkes’s death with a varied programme of his music, performed in the building where he was Organist and ‘informator choristarum’ (Master of the choristers) for many years, presenting repertoire written for both domestic and sacred performance. This unique collection features a selection of anthems and canticles, both a cappella and with organ continuo, plus six sacred choral works, originally with an outline accompaniment for organ, which have been reconstructed with a full accompaniment for viol consort. Weelkes left no original works for this combination of choir and viol consort so these provide an illuminating and enticing exploration of putative examples of the form. Also included are four original works for viol consort, together with Weelkes’s only two surviving works for solo organ, here played by Thomas Howell, the Cathedral’s organ scholar on the Cathedral’s main organ using the oldest stops – featuring some of the oldest surviving pipework in England – and dating back to the early eighteenth-century instrument, built by John Byfield in 1725. The collaboration of the Cathedral’s Lay Clerks and the The Rose Consort of Viols with the young voices of the Chichester Cathedral Choristers, infuses these accomplished performances with a refreshing element of youthful energy.

In the 1950s BARNEY KESSEL was acknowledged as the premier Jazz guitarist in the US, routinely voted #1 in Esquire, Downbeat and Playboy magazine polls.

Imre Szechenyi was a distinguished diplomat who rose to become the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to Berlin, retaining the friendship and admiration of a gallery of leading figures of the age: Liszt, Johann Strauss II, Suppe, Waldteufel, Bismarck, and many others. He was also a pianist and composer, and his diplomatic career ran parallel to his musical life. Szechenyi’s metier was the dance, and his series of polkas, mazurkas and serenades – infectiously engaging and ardently lyrical – were popular pieces in their day but are now little known. orchestrations of many of these dances were made by the composer (Naxos 8.573807) but five that were never scored for orchestra are included here.

Exclusive Early Release at NativeDSD in Pure DSD 256! Two Weeks before the official release on May 26th in DSD 64. Enjoy this album before the rest of the world, only at NativeDSD.

The ensemble Ratas de viejo mundo lets us discover the richness of the musical heritage of Parma, which developed into a leading musical centre under the Farnese, at the latest in the 16th century. At the Farnese court, Flemish musicians such as Cipriano de Rore or Josquin Persoens achieved great fame and had a decisive influence on the development of instrumental music and the madrigal.

The Bennewitz Quartet is one of the top ensembles on the international chamber music scene. After winning two prestigious competitions – Osaka Chamber Music and Festa 2005 and Prémio Paolo Borciani, Italy 2008, they quickly gained the acclaim of the critics. The ensemble has received various awards and in 2019 the four musicians won the Classic Prague Award for the Best Chamber Music Performance of the year.In the 2022/23 season the Bennewitz Quartet will return to Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Mozartfest Würzburg, Wigmore Hall London, Stadtcasino Basel and it will tour again in the United States. The ensemble will represent the Czech Republic in Madrid at the closing ceremony marking the end of its presidency of the Council of the European Union. The quartet will take part in the complete performance of the six quartets by Béla Bartok in Leuven and will continue its engagement in Dvořák’s integral string quartet performance within the Dvořák’s Prague Festival. The ensemble is currently preparing the release of its new CD featuring the string quartets by Joseph Haydn.

The pianist Anna Zassimova offers us a musical journey through most of Chopin’s creative periods, bringing together miniatures and some larger scaled, highly structured works. We can thus follow the composer’s stylistic evolution: slightly whimsical at first, then works that are often tragic and violent, evolving in his final years towards great luminosity and relative calm.

Composed in 1915, Szymanowski’s Mythes is a three movement work consisting of miniature tone poems based on Greek mythology. Late romantic and impressionist in style, the composer’s travels to Sicily and North Africa without doubt influenced the exotic and sumptuous sound world he created in this work. Mythes is the opening work on this eclectic recital album from James Ehnes and Andrew Armstrong. Also on this programme is Handel’s D major violin sonata – a once popular staple of the violin repertoire, now sadly seldom encountered. The album concludes with a selection of short and sparkly miniatures and encores. There are some old favourites here as well as new – James Newton Howard’s ‘133…At least’ is dazzling!

The Other One, the latest from Henry Threadgill, is the musical component of a large multimedia work performed and recorded live at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn, New York in 2022. The recording is comprised of a three-movement composition entitled “Of Valence,” which was inspired by the percussionist and theorist Milford Graves, in particular, his integration of the human heartbeat into his musical works, and is performed by a 12-piece ensemble. All the hallmarks of Threadgill’s music are here: unpredictable forms, unusual instrumental combinations that create surprising timbres, percolating rhythms, interwoven melodic strains, and masterful interlacing of composition with improvisation. The New York Times described the performance as possessing “a galvanic sense of swing,” and “in lock-step with his every surprise rhythmic feint — producing an obliquely danceable, straightforwardly joyous Threadgillian energy.” There is nothing else like it.

With 'Ariabesques' Bill Dobbins and the WDR Big Band bring Johann Sebastian Bach's "Goldberg Variations" to new life, it's presented as a double CD in six panel digipack with a 12-page booklet.

The Trio Wanderer follows up its multi-award- winning Schumann set with an exploration of the fascinating world of César Franck.The gulf between his youthful trios and the prodigious works of his maturity reveals a fundamental turning point in the history of French chamber music.Continuing along the trail that Franck blazed with such brio, Louis Vierne’s deeply moving Quintet offers an echo of the older man’s work.

Daniel Speer was a Stadtpfeifer (a ‘town piper’ - in fact a multi-instrumentalist with a repertoire dedicated in particular to functional music), and he was also a composer, music theorist, teacher, political commentator, writer, and one of the most astonishing - and mysterious - figures of musical Baroque.In this programme, performed on period instruments, Capella Itineris explore Daniel Speer’s religious music, as well as his sonatas and a little-known aspect of his work: his quodlibets, which enable us not only to sample his humour and his taste for caricature, but also to discover the originality - not to say, extravagance - of his style.

Schmittbaur, der in Bamberg geboren wurde, erhielt seine Ausbildung durch den Würzburger Hoforgelbauer Johann Seuffert, zudem war er Schüler von Niccolo Jacomelli in Bologna. 1754 erhielt er eine Anstellung in der Rastatter Hofkapelle, 1766 wurde er deren Kapellmeister. Nach der Auflösung der Rastatter Kapelle war er Konzertmeister in der Karlsruher Hofkapelle. Ab Januar 1775 erhielt Schmittbaur die Stelle des Domkapellmeisters in Köln, wo er das Musikleben durch die Konzerte der »Musikalischen Akademien« nachhaltig prägte. 1777 wurde er Hofkapellmeister in Karlsruhe, wo er der dortigen Kapelle zu hohem Ansehen verhalf. Nach Schmittbaurs Tod geriet seine Musik lange in Vergessenheit. Doch zu Unrecht, wie diese Aufnahme von l’arte del mondo unter der Leitung des Dirigenten Werner Ehrhardt zeigt. Zu hören sind drei Sinfonien op. 2 (1776), die aus Schmittbaurs Kölner Zeit als Domkapellmeister stammen und durchweg heiteren, teilweise sogar humorvollen Charakter haben. Die vierte Sinfonie hat den Titel »bey Gelegenheit der Höchsten Vermählung« und wurde von Schmittbaur 1797 für die Hochzeit der Tochter des badischen Erbprinzen Carl Ludwig komponiert. Auch dieses Spätwerk erweist sich als ein farbenfroh instrumentiertes und kontrastreiches Stück.