Their albums are almost everytime built around 70% melodic hardrock stuff and 30% melodic metal-smashers, this album follows the same formula, so fans of the band will like it that's for sure. That album is phenomenal! You can't go wrong with any PM, but "Spooked" is just something else! Fantastic playing, great hooks, and awesome songwriting. "Spooked", released in 1997, was regarded by many as an instant classic, maintaining the energy and heaviness of "Scream" whilst still capturing the quintessential melody that is Pretty Maids.

Franz Liszt - Christus Oratorio
Beethoven Orchester Bonn - Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno - Roman Kofman
EAC+LOG+CUE | 3xFLAC: 547 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: MDG "Gold" # 937 1366-6 | Country/Year: Germany 2006
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic, Sacred, Oratorio

…I already indicated the excellent qualities of the soloists especially Franziska Hirzel and Birgit Remmert who sing with that important ethereal intensity. Kofman conducts with the ideal tonic and lets the music move along quite magically. The SACD sound comes out trumps on my Sony SACD-11 player and I really have nothing but an unqualified recommendation for this beautiful set.

In the early sixties the clarinettist Dieter Klöcker founded the CONSORTIUM CLASSICUM - a German chambermusic ensemble - which not only cultivated the standard repertory, but also brought back to life rediscovered musical masterworks. The instrumentation of these works include wind instruments only as well as the combination of woodwinds and strings up to a nonette. The members of the Ensemble are all solists, professors from music academies and leaders from first class orchestras, who uphold the Ensemble´s concept in a very individual and consistent manner. International appearances in concerts, honorable awards and invitations to famous festivals - including the Salzburg Festival, the Vienna Festival and the Berlin festival etc. - as well as numerous records, radio and TV productions, all go to confirm the extraordinary status of this unique ensemble.

Domenico Scarlatti’s Stabat mater is, and seems always to have been, among the most popular of his comparatively small number of sacred vocal pieces. He probably wrote it between the years 1708 and 1728 when he was primarily employed as a church composer in Rome and in Lisbon. His setting of the 13th-century text is in ten parts divided into four soprano strands, two alto, two tenor and two bass with continuo. The style – a blend of older techniques with more up-to-date means of expression – is curiously anonymous and fails to sustain interest throughout. But it has many attractive ideas and its craftsmanship is well sustained. Several recordings of the piece are available, some preferring one voice to a part to the more chorally inclined version favoured here by the Choir of King’s College, under its director Stephen Cleobury. Nicholas Anderson

EP includes live recordings from The Lord of Steel World Tour 2012/2013, featuring performances from the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Italy, Russia and Sweden.