Minas Borboudakis has explored much mythology, philosophy, technology and the natural sciences, and the compositions in this collection reflect this. The CD includes the percussion concerto Archégonon: written for Peter Sadlo, it is a work dealing with “very beginnings”. Also included are two works written for the ensemble spectral: Tetraktys (a string quartet on the number 4) and Krámata (a sextet on alloys).

The five orchestral works in this comprehensive anthology have a common nucleus pointing to the core interests which Bruno Maderna pursued from 1954 to 1966: experiments with a post-serial harmonic vocabulary, and a search for dramatic structures. This CD includes Composition in Three Tempi, Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, Aria, Dimension III and Stele per Diotima.

Bavarian-born composer Michael Bastian Weiß has studied both music and philosophy, and his notes to the two-movement Fragmenta Missarum pro Defunctis (Fragments of a Mass for the Dead) – although not, curiously, for the other work on the disc, the Sonate über die Dunkelheit (Simphonie Nr. 2) – have a philosophical orientation. The Fragmenta Missarum, he said, apply "a topos of recent musical history, namely working with stillness," to the problem of "reacting to a historical disaster that caused considerable pain to countless people." The work was composed in 2000, and this presumably refers to the Holocaust.

John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist, born near Clarksdale, Mississippi. Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark. Though similar to the early Delta blues, his music was metrically free. John Lee Hooker could be said to embody his own unique genre of the blues, often incorporating the boogie-woogie piano style and a driving rhythm into his masterful and idiosyncratic blues guitar and singing. His best known songs include "Boogie Chillen" (1948) and "Boom Boom" (1962).

Franz Liszt's Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross), composed in 1878, dates from the end of his career, when the formerly flamboyant composer joined a monastic order and spent part of his time living a spartan life in a small apartment near Rome. The work combines extreme spareness with the chromatic experimentation characteristic of the composer's late years, with simple melodies subjected Bachian part-writing that veers into expressive chromatic depths. The work shows off the powers of a small choir and has been recorded many times, but this German release, featuring the West German Radio Chorus of Cologne under Rupert Huber, is a standout for several reasons.

It's a fairly well known fact that Bach had a keen interest in music of his musical ancestors as well as his contemporaries. His library contained music of other German composers as well as music from France and Italy. Among the composers whose music found a home on Bach's shelves were Antonio Vivaldi, Christoph Graupner, and Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758). Whether or not Bach ever performed this music with his Collegium Musicum at Zimmermann's Coffee House in Leipzig is unknown, but Bach thought enough of the music of these and other composers to seek it out and collect it.

The band's fifth release, Rain Dances is Camel at its best, offering the most consistent and representative package in their saga. The addition of Caravan-cofounder Richard Sinclair proves profitable, as do a few colorist touches by Brian Eno on "Elke." Mel Collins' woodwinds are among the highlights, especially on "Tell Me" and the title track. From beginning to end, this project flows gracefully.

Marek Janowski, Music Director of the Suisse Romande Orchestra since 2004, has made an excellent recording for Pentatone with that orchestra–a coupling of symphonies of Franck and Chausson. With the Pittsburgh Symphony, he has recorded the four Brahms symphonies: Symphony No. 1, Symphonies 1 and 3, and Symphony No. 4. These Strauss performances were recorded live in Pittsburgh's Heinz Hall October/November 2008, produced and recorded by Job Maarse, who did a fine job.

Ein glückliches Leben führte sie nicht, die Markgräfin Wilhelmine (1709-1758) von Bayreuth. Als Kind wurde sie von einer geradezu bösartigen Gouvernante gepeinigt und hatte Wutausbrüche ihres Vaters, dem Soldatenkönig Friedrich Wilhelm I., über sich ergehen zu lassen, der so gar nichts vom weiblichen Geschlecht hielt. Wenngleich auch Wilhelmine wie eine Gefangene gehalten wurde, so traf es ihren geliebten Bruder, Kronprinz Friedrich, besonders hart: von seinem Vater verachtet, hatte er sogar unter Festungshaft zu leiden.

Bach's viola da gamba sonatas with Lautenwerk! While the Sonata for Flute, Violin, and Passing Bass is an arranged version, the three Sonatas for Viola da gamba and Harpsichord that follow were composed around 1740, using Bach's own Lautenwerk (an instrument similar to a harpsichord, but with gut strings instead of metal strings), which belonged to Bach himself. Robert Hill used a replica of the lautenwerk to make this recording. The recording is a replica of the Lautenwerk, which allows for a greater sense of unity with the sound of Eckhard Weber's viola da gamba, and recreates the sound of the instrument at the time it was composed.

Troubadours songs; laude to the Virgin and estampies from trecento mingle with Sephardic lullabies and folksongs collected in Italy. They tell the stories of simple men and women of the Mediterranean world. Languages and music have survived to the din of the wars, religious conquests, political dominations between North and South… This record is an intimate compilation which raises from the old village song telling the cycle of life, the redemption sought with the Virgin, the curtly love of the Countess of Die, Tarentella or the famous separdic lullaby Nani, Nani for the beloved son…« Ever since antiquity, the shores of the Mediterranean have assembled men and women who share a cultural heritage with multiple resonances. (religious and cultural : christians, jews, arabs, languages : castillan, occitan, florentin, napolitain, sarde…).

Alessandro Scarlatti La Giuditta was written for five voices and instruments. In 1697, Scarlatti set a second libretto, this time written by Cardinal Ottoboni’s father, Antonio, in which the number of characters was reduced to three. We do not know the occasion for which this second setting was created and lack information on its first performance. The differences between the two versions are discussed in Brian Robins’ review of a previous recording, which interested readers will find in the Archive. (Robins states that the second version was written for Rome in 1700. The notes to Dynamic’s recording state that the first version was the one performed in 1700.)

The Sablé festival, held annually in Sablé-sur-Sarthe in France, has its own recording concern that it uses primarily to expose young early music artists and to support the most interesting of their projects; the Zig-Zag Territoires label provides an outlet for this endeavor. Here is a wholly worthy enterprise: the group Gli Incogniti – led by the fabulous young violinist Amandine Beyer – in a program drawn from various works of mysterious late seventeenth-century violinist Nicola Matteis, its title, False Consonances of Melancholy, fashioned after one of his publications, but not limited to its contents. As Matteis is not a household name, some summary of his place in the scheme of things is not out of order here: born in Naples, possibly contemporary to Heinrich von Biber, Matteis was an itinerant musician in Germany before making his way to London about 1670.