I am very happy to have taken a chance and picked this up. Malipiero's string quartets are tonal and full of drama, yet avoid bland melodies or redundancy. In listening to these 8 works I was reminded a little of Bartok's first two quartets (before the full-on angular innovations), as well as the Debussy/Ravel quartets (Malipiero apparently spent a bit of time in Paris). While it would be debatable to suggest these works are in the same league as those, listeners who enjoy this medium with occasional dissonant spice will warm to these…..

410 @ Amazon.com

As a committed socialist, the Portuguese composer Fernando Lopes-Graça (1906–94) faced repression from Salazar’s right-wing dictatorship: his works were banned and he was stripped of his official positions. Lopes-Graça responded in music, evolving a feisty, wiry Bartókian style that drew on Portuguese folk-music. This recording features Lopes-Graça’s own Bechstein piano, played by Olga Prats, who worked closely with him.

Nikolay Yakovlevich Myaskovsky (1881-1950), the Musical Conscience of Moscow, has been deemed by many as the greatest of Soviet symphonists. And listening to his symphonies, it is not hard to see why. Hardly free from the problems with some of the turgidness, redundancy, and plainness in the writing, his music is real stuff, hardly facile, and honest in its communicative utterance. He was indeed a Twentieth Century Piotr Illyich Tchaikovsky, not as an epigone, but as a man not afraid to express himself and at the same time allow his music to remain accessible.

NEKTAR is probably the most German-like of the Seventies British bands, a fame that owes a lot to the town in which this band was founded (Hamburg) and to their stylistic approach (Assimilated to Krautrock). NEKTAR was formed in 1969 by Allan FREEMAN (keyboards & vocals), Roye ALBRIGHTON (guitars & vocals), Derek MOORE (bass, Mellotron & vocals) and Ron HOWDEN (drums).

George Gershwin - Rhapsody In Blue, An American In Paris, Broadway Overtures
George Gershwin, piano / Buffalo Philharmonic / Michael Tilson Thomas, dir.
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 353 MB | Full Artwork: 89 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: CBS Masterworks # SMK 42240 | Country/Year: Europe 198_
Genre: Jazz, Classical, Historical Recording | Style: Early 20th Century, Classic Jazz

The great musical border crosser of the twentieth century, George Gershwin excelled in the fields of concert music and popular song alike. The son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, he was born Jacob Gershvin in Brooklyn on September 26, 1898. His father ran a great variety of small businesses, and George, in the words of the New Grove Dictionary of Music, "excelled at street sports." He also studied the piano and was introduced to the European classics by his teacher, Charles Hambitzer…