Chute Libre was a french jazz band that released two fusion records with pronounced funk sound. Before Chute Libre, three members also played in a fusion band called Moravagine; keyboardist Olivier Huntman, sax player Pierre-Jean Gidon and the drummer Mino Cinelu who is a member of Gong and Weather Report.

The CD is a hodgepodge of various tunes from Bach to Beatles supposedly requested by listeners after "The Well-Tempered Synthesizer" was released. The result may only only be mildly interesting to the occasional listener, but to followers of electronic music, it's like rediscovering a lost gem.

Idiomatic doesn't even begin to describe the music-making on this disc coupling Dvorák's String Quintet in G major, Op. 77, and his Piano Quintet in A major, Op. 81. Not only are the four members of the Czech Skampa Quartet – violinists Pavel Fischer and Jana Lukásova, violist Radim Sedmidubský, and cellist Lukás Polák – incredibly tight, together, and in the groove with the music's Bohemian rhythms, but so are their guest artists: French double-bassist Laurène Durantel and English pianist Kathryn Stott.

In these works, written for the Chapel Royal, Lully is inspired to paint a whole sweep of emotions, at once melancholy, sweet, tragic, noble and victorious. Observe his mastery of color. Listen to how choral and orchestral textures, now in five, now in ten parts, change with the rhythm of the text. Note how subtle touches of orchestral color highlight the meaning of a word or the sweetness of a modulation.

Heinichen’s last Mass, composed in the style of the high baroque as a ”number mass,“ is imposing as a result of its architectonic force and its inexhaustible originality. The basis for the brilliant, festive character of Bach's Magnificat is the scoring for trompets, timpani and a choir which here is expanded to five voices.

Before the early 20th century, any list of significant Western composers would have included Benedetto Marcello. Through his advocacy of a return to the proportional values and simplicity of ancient Roman civilization, he helped set the stage for the Classical era in Western music, soon to unseat the aesthetic norms of the Baroque in which he lived.