Remember Jan Hammer and Jeff Beck jamming together with lead tradeoffs ad libitum forever amen? You will hear many similarities in guitar legend Holdsworth and keysman Jens Johansson springboarding off each other. A big difference soon unfolds – this duo just plain smokes, cutting early into the fast lane and getting right down to business. Things overall are compositionally interesting, noticeably precise, big and phat, just more intriguing than those Hammer/Beck excursions. It immensely helps havin' monster-everywhere drumming, a veritable demon-wind blowin' at their backs like Anders Johansson kept rock steady. It was refreshing to hear Holdsworth get funked up and get in a rockin' groove thang for a change on many cuts. His guitar tone seemed bigger – perhaps augmented in places with some background triggered synth-echo delays and textures.

A magisterial account of Biber's Sonatas for Violin and Continuo, some of the most remarkable and forward-looking music created in the late 17th century, played by John Holloway, with Aloysia Assenbaum and Lars Ulrik Mortensen. 'The continuo team provide a lavish backdrop to Holloway's fantastic realisations of Biber's music, with all its twisting and turning passagework, the increasingly intricate variations, the complex double-stopping in scordatura; it's all there, and it's all brilliant in the true sense of the word. No one interested in the repertoire should miss this!

This is the second and last volume of Naxos’s complete music for solo piano by Rodrigo. It is played by the superb Artur Pizarro. I was enthusiastic about Volume 1 a couple of years ago (see review), even chose it as one of my recordings of the year. I wasn’t alone in admiring it: both my colleagues Steve Arloff and Patrick Waller praised it and it was Editor’s choice in Gramophone. I have no reason to be less enthusiastic this time. Pizarro’s playing is certainly second to none, combining clarity with warmth and being unfailingly rhythmically alert.

This second instalment in the continuing cycle of Ries's piano concertos from Naxos is a disc for your wish-list. Ries is more famous today for being Beethoven's pupil and biographer than for his own career in music. In his day he ranked with Hummel and, yes, even with Beethoven himself as one of Europe's greatest composer-pianists. Thanks to the efforts of Naxos and Allan Badley's Artaria Editions, we can now hear for ourselves what it was that so excited nineteenth century audiences.

Duane Allman - An Anthology, Vol. I (1972) {2CD Set 2008 SHM-CD Japan Mini LP, Universal Japan UICY-93507~8}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 622 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 219 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 26 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1972, 2008 Universal / Polydor / Capricorn | UICY-93507/8
Rock / Blues Rock / Southern Rock / Blues

Cardboard sleeve (mini LP) reissue from Gregg Allman featuring the high quality SHM-CD format, the latest remastering, and Cardboard sleeve replica of the original English LP artwork. Duane Allman's greatness was apparent on his recordings with the Allman Brothers, yet there was another side to the superb guitarist. For many years, he was a highly respected session musician, playing on cuts by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, King Curtis, Boz Scaggs, Delaney & Bonnie, and Clarence Carter, among others. By including those session cuts, as well as a sampling of his brief sojourn in Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes and a few rare solo tracks, along with a number of representative Allman Brothers songs, the double-album Anthology winds up drawing a complete portrait of Allman. He may have recorded plenty of other material worth hearing, but this has the bare essentials for an excellent introduction and retrospective.

John Coltrane - The Complete Concerts: Live in France, July 27 & 28, 1965 (2009) {2CD Set Gambit Records 69317}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 597 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 268 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 22 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1965, 2009 Gambit Records | 69317
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Saxophone

1965 was a furious time for John Coltrane. He had just come off the recording of the future landmark, A Love Supreme a year earlier and now was in mist of a series of quartet and ensemble sessions. By June of '65 Coltrane had recorded The Quartet Plays, OM, Kulu Se Mama, Selflessness and another landmark recording to rival A Love Supreme–Ascension. Ascension was a massive work that feature a who's who of future jazz legends (Freddie Hubbard, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Art Davis, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, Marion Brown, Dewey Johnson and McCoy Tyner). It is another spiritual masterpiece that is difficult for the average Coltrane fan to get their head and ears around. It is a cavalcade of sound and emotion that is similar in scope to OM. Shortly after its release Coltrane set out on a European tour with his current quartet. This formed the basis for the Live In France release.

The contrast is striking. Stanford’s Clarinet Concerto may be the more solidly constructed and efficiently crafted work, but compared with Finzi’s vitality, expressive subtlety and long-breathed lyrical charm, it’s rarely more than a worthy effort. Thea King’s shaping and colouring of Finzi’s almost improvisatory melodic lines is more deeply persuasive than any other recorded version I know – touching without being sentimental. As for the Stanford, I’ll just say that King’s playing suggests she likes it more than I did. Neither recording sounds quite as fresh and clear as they did when they first appeared, 20 years ago, but they’re still more than serviceable.