The intense-looking trio of pianist Frank Braley and violin-cello brother duo Renaud and Gautier Capuçon has made a critical splash with innovative performances of standard chamber-music repertory in which they move confidently as a unit despite whatever unorthodoxies they may be propounding. Schubert's pair of trios, filled out with two shorter single movements for piano trio to make two short discs, offers a good introduction to their revisionism. In the Piano Trio No. 2 in E flat major, D. 929, the listener will immediately be struck by the brisk tempo of the opening movmement – although it doesn't go beyond what the tempo marking of Allegro indicates, it's a good deal faster than the languid, lyrical tradition that has grown up around this work and around Schubert in general.

Hoist the sails, sharpen your cutlasses, and fill your tankards - Alestorm is back with their brand-new album, The Thunderfist Chronicles! The Scottish party pirates return with their eighth album, containing eight new anthems packed with blistering riffs, wild shanty-driven melodies, and utterly ridiculous lyrics - taking the high seas of metal to new depths.
The Thunderfist Chronicles arrives as the successor to Alestorm’s epic seventh studio album, Seventh Rum of a Seventh Rum, which peaked at #5 on both the US Current Hard Music and Top New Artist Albums charts, #7 on the German Album charts, and many others. After the release of last year’s Voyage of the Dead Marauder EP and a journey of extensive touring, the pioneering pirate metal band returned to their ship and once again teamed up with Lasse Lammert of LSD-Studios (Gloryhammer, Wind Rose) for production, recording, mixing, and mastering of The Thunderfist Chronicles…

This album has an interesting concept, alternating four original blues with five adaptations of melodies from classical works by Bach. The Modern Jazz Quartet had long been quite adept in both areas, and despite a certain lack of variety on this set (alternating back and forth between the two styles somewhat predictably), the music is largely enjoyable. Vibraphonist Milt Jackson, pianist John Lewis (doubling here on harpsichord), bassist Percy Heath, and drummer Connie Kay were still all very much in their musical prime during the 21st year of the MJQ's existence.

Deep Purple announces ‘Rapture of the Deep (20th Anniversary Remix)’ and releases new single, ‘Junkyard Blues’, through earMUSIC.
It’s no secret that ‘Rapture of the Deep’ isn’t the first album that comes to mind when listing Deep Purple’s classics – and while it was met with interest at the time, it gradually faded from view. Despite solid sales, the album arrived during a period when there was little spotlight on the world of classic rock, and over the years, ‘Rapture of the Deep’ developed into an overlooked chapter in Deep Purple’s rich discography.
It’s equally true that this record, and the story behind it, marked a turning point - the quiet beginning of a run that would eventually lead to four consecutive No. 1 albums (2013, 2017, 2020, 2024)…

Claus Zundel (aka "The Brave") is a German composer, songwriter, producer and pianist. He has created several worldwide successful musical projects, most notable Sacred Spirit and B-Tribe (sold 20 million. copies combined), as well as more Indie projects such as "Moroccan Spirit", "Classical Spirit", "Divine Works", Ancient Spirit and his latest project "Tango Jointz". His music style is usually called as "The Brave Sound" as it considers a large number of music styles mixed in his special way. He often collaborates with musicians and singers from around the world and creates "The Brave Sound" projects with them.

Capuçon, with pianist Jérôme Ducros, also his partner for a Virgin Classics Schubert recital released in 2006, has selected favourite encore pieces such as Kreisler’s mercurial Liebesleid and Dvorák's lilting Humoreske (arranged by Heifetz), tender episodes like Debussy's Clair de lune and Tchaikovsky's Valse sentimentale, works by the Romantics – Schubert (with the Ave Maria arranged by Capuçon himself), Mendelssohn and Schumann (transcriptions of numbers from the song cycle Frauenliebe und –Leben), and by composers of the 20th century – Strauss, Prokofiev, Szymanowski, Stravinsky, Korngold and the Romanian Grigoras Dinicu (reputedly judged by Heifetz as the greatest violinist he had ever heard).

This is one of the greatest chamber CDs, bringing together Chausson's timeless Concert with his elusive String Quartet in the most beautiful, idiomatic performances imaginable. Augustin Dumay and Jean-Philippe Collard have never been bettered as a duo, but they particularly are in their element in this music, given its full expression by their passion and strength, which combines with a sense of style that is as natural as speech.

Of all the composers whose names are far better known than their music, Czerny must be the most famous. Czerny? Oh yes, he was the chap who wrote those 'velocity exercises', the medicine pianists must take if they are to get better. True, but that wasn't all, his opus numbers leave little change out of 850! So why the neglect? Maybe there are two reasons. First, as a pupil of Beethoven, a teacher of Liszt and a contemporary of Schubert, he was born at the wrong time, surrounded by compositional giants. Second, it was his large output of didactic works and his eminence as a teacher that shaped his image, and his emphasis on technical brilliance was not always helpful to the balance of his music.

The intervening dozen years since I reviewed Hyperion’s initial release of four English Violin Concertos (66865, 20:2) may not have witnessed a surge of interest in these works; nevertheless, the panache that Elizabeth Wallfisch brought to them in her recording sessions in January 1996 has hardly paled with the passage of time. These violinist-composers, contemporaries of Viotti and Mozart, wrote in an Italianate style, with woodwind splashes (all four concertos include oboes and horns, and Linley’s adds flutes as well) that enhance the kind of concertante symphonic sound which Paul Stoeving noted in Viotti’s concertos.