Sándor Veress represents a high water mark in Hungary’s rich musical heritage. He belongs between the generations of Bartók and Kodály, his teachers, and of Ligeti and Kurtag, his pupils. He experienced both world wars and Hungary’s police state afterwards, emigrating to Switzerland at age 45. Veress also taught Heinz Holliger, who was responsible for this fine recording, a loving tribute to his teacher. The Hommage à Paul Klee, the first of the …..

Bert Bailey @ musicweb-nternational.com

Dmitri Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103, "The Year 1905" - Houston Symphony Orchestra; Leopold Stokowski
Classical | 1 CD | EAC Rip | 308 Mb, 3% recovery | FLAC+LOG+Cue | Cover scans
Publisher: EMI Classics | Recorded: 1960s| Published: 1994

Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com
This has always been the version of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11 to go by. All others pale against this. This first appeared as a double vinyl LP in the 1960s, then as a single LP in the 1970s, and now on this CD. But give credit where all the credit is due: Stokowski extracts a deeply felt performance from the Houston Symphony Orchestra that catches all the nuances of the slow passages of each movement. But kudos go to the sound engineers who capture the incredible bass passages in the last movement. Since this is also a mid-price CD, this is the one to get. –Paul Cook

Raison d'être is a Swedish industrial ambient music project formed by Peter Andersson. The name of the band was taken from a sentence in a book by Carl Gustav Jung: "the individuation is the raison d’être of the self". Dark ambient atmospheres, drone elements, industrial sounds, ecclesiastical hymns are all blended together to constitute the music of Raison d'être. Deeply influenced by the writings of C.G.Jung, Raison d'être explores the depths of human psyche providing soundtracks for inner voyages towards the Tragic.The music produced by Raison d'être is variously darkwave, dark ambient, and soundscape in nature. For example, synthesizers might play a droning melody over the sound of metal scraping together. Andersson often mixes tapes of Gregorian chant with his own keyboard and percussion playing.

Iberian Black metallers Noctem release the new album ”Exilium“ on March 3 in Spain, and on April 7 in the rest of Europe through Art Gates Records.

This album by guitarist John Williams offers a repertoire of eighteen items, versioned guitar with orchestral accompaniment, taken from well-known soundtrack movies. Williams himself claims that he is always listening to film music to play with his guitar and although soundtracks are designed differently so his versions, both bring something extra that neither words nor pictures can offer.

In 1992 the most artistically brilliant pianist able to blend the American musical styles, especially Afro-Cuban jazz and bebop, with mambo was Hilton Ruiz (New York, 1952 to 2006), who had worked with figures as Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson or Dizzy Gillespie. Between 1980 and 2000 Hilton led his own band that recorded eighteen albums as a leader, including this one, which led to an update of the status of dance music with Cuban roots in New York. Hilton, playing the piano, was accompanied by several of the most prominent Latin musicians such as percussionists Steve Berrios, Ignacio Berroa and Giovanni Hidalgo, bass Andy Gonzalez, trumpeter Charlie Sepúlveda, tenor saxophonist David Sánchez and trombonist Papo Vázquez. It is the instrumental version of mambo in Latin jazz during 90s.

The short, mysterious career of the aptly named female French duo Deux Filles is bookended by tragedy. Gemini Forque and Claudine Coule met as teenagers at a holiday pilgrimage to Lourdes, during which Coule's mother died of an incurable lung disease and Forque's mother was killed and her father paralyzed in a grisly auto accident…