Originally recorded in 1962 for Smash Records and beautifully preserved on this 2003 Verve archival reissue, This Is Billy Mitchell is a criminally underrated masterpiece of golden-era hard bop architecture. Best known for his explosive, fiery tenor saxophone contributions to the big bands of Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie, Mitchell steps confidently into the leader spotlight here to front a truly unique studio ensemble. The frontline pairs Mitchell's muscular, robust horn lines with the crisp bop vocabulary of trumpet veteran Dave Burns and the pioneering, crystalline modal textures of a very young Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone. The rhythm matrix is brilliantly split across sessions, featuring driving support from pianist Billy Wallace, bassist Herman Wright, and drummer Otis Finch, alongside soulful organ work by Clarence "Sleepy" Anderson. From the hard-charging drive of the opening blues "J & B" and the advanced groove of "Automation" to a deeply lyrical, breathy reading of Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady," this definitive album stands as an essential, incredibly swinging document of mid-century jazz mastery.

Originally recorded in 1956 for the legendary Bethlehem label and beautifully preserved on this 2004 Japanese Toshiba EMI reissue, Grand Stan is an absolute pinnacle of West Coast hard bop architecture. Fronted by powerhouse drummer and bebop pioneer Stan Levey, this blistering sextet session brings together the absolute elite of the mid-50s Los Angeles scene: trumpet virtuoso Conte Candoli, trombone master Frank Rosolino, and the wonderfully lyrical tenor saxophonist Richie Kamuca. The rhythm engine is uniquely driven by the deeply soulful, definitive Blue Note piano icon Sonny Clark and walking bass legend Leroy Vinnegar. Far from the cool, relaxed jazz often associated with California at the time, this album delivers an intensely swinging, high-octane set of intricate charts. From the explosive drive of the title track and the percussion showcase on "Hit That Thing" to a deeply swinging reading of Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays," the front line trades fierce, precise solos with absolute authority. This definitive archival release stands as an essential masterpiece for collectors of golden-era bop history.

Released in 2008 on his own Dare2 Records label (in collaboration with EmArcy), Pass It On is a magnificent, high-octane masterwork from master double bassist and legendary bandleader Dave Holland. Fronting an extraordinary sextet, Holland beautifully adapts his brilliant, polyrhythmic small-group structures for an expanded three-horn frontline. The powerhouse ensemble features saxophonist Antonio Hart, trumpeter Alex Sipiagin, and longtime collaborator Robin Eubanks on trombone, anchored by an elite rhythm engine comprising piano titan Mulgrew Miller and the remarkably explosive drummer Eric Harland. Spanning over 74 minutes of music, the album features intricately arranged, hard-driving originals and reinvented classics from Holland's historic catalog, including the serpentine grooves of "Lazy Snake" and the soaring, modal lines of "Rivers Run." Powered by Holland's rich, authoritative acoustic bass walking lines and Harland's kinetic precision, this definitive release perfectly balances the dense, shifting time signatures of contemporary jazz with the vibrant, soulful warmth of post-bop big band architecture.

This sensational 1957 release marks the historic Blue Note debut of legendary jazz pianist Sonny Clark, introducing his brilliantly blues-drenched sensibility to the label that would define his career. Leading a stellar three-horn front line that features a young Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, Art Farmer on trumpet, and Curtis Fuller on trombone, Clark establishes himself immediately as an elite compositional voice and an exceptionally tasteful bandleader. The sextet operates with total cohesion, navigating Clark’s soulful, intricately wound original themes and beloved standards with an irresistible, swaggering drive. Backed by the remarkable rhythm section of bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Louis Hayes, Clark’s signature single-note piano lines and bubbling double-time phrases sparkle with creative authority. It remains a definitive textbook example of late-fifties hard bop, radiating an infectious, late-night swing and deep emotional resonance that rewards continuous listening.

Before he won acclaim in Hollywood for such film scores as Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk, Erich Wolfgang Korngold had been a successful wunkerkind of classical music in Europe, composing ambitious music that impressed the likes of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. The Sextet in D major, Op. 10 (1914-1916), and the Piano Quintet in E major, Op. 15 (1921-1922) were composed when Korngold was a young man, and their ardent and optimistic music are typical of the post-Romantic style he cultivated for most of his career.

After two stylistically diverse anthologies - In Motion and Renewal - the United Strings of Europe and their director Julian Azkoul have chosen to devote their latest project to a single composer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. They open with the composer's Serenade, a tribute to Mozart's divertimentos, but infused with Tchaikovsky's characteristic pathos and melancholy. It is one of his most popular works, with the especially beloved Waltz as it's second movement, and a finale featuring Russian folk songs. The other works included on this recording are arrangements tailor-made for the ensemble by Julian Azkoul.

This disc is full of beautiful, fine-drawn, sensitive playing, very much alert to the mercurial moods of Boccherini’s music, and with Chiara Banchini as delicate as can be imagined with his filigree lines – but also full-blooded when the music so demands. Period instruments and restrained use of vibrato give a welcome airiness to the textures. I can’t imagine performances that catch more truly the special nature of Boccherini’s muse.

The string sextet genre was introduced at the end of the 18th century by Boccherini but did not fully blossom until Brahms, Tchaikovsky, before Schönberg, Reger, Martinu and Richard Strauss. Antonín Dvořák composed his sextet, his only work in that genre, in just two weeks in May 1878. His reputation as a composer was beginning to escalate, he was experienced with chamber composition, having already produced nine string quartets, a string quintet, four piano trios, a piano quartet, and a piano quintet.

This cd brings out some amazing aspects of the Brahms sextets. Brahms playing in general have never been close to this! The instruments are strung with gut strings, as the instruments were at the time it was written, which creates some really unique sounds and gives an amazingly free bowing phrasing. When the steel-string sonorities and the constant vibrato has been removed, a pure and vital sound is created which gives so much to the music of Johannes Brahms, at least in the sextets.

They mean well, their hearts are in it, and they clearly have the chops. But ultimately, the Prazák Quartet's and Kocian Quartet's recording of Mendelssohn's ineffably evanescent String Octet doesn't quite make the grade. Because for all their good intentions, the Prazák and Kocian quartets' performance does not quite capture the work's ineffable evanescence, its sense of youthful impetuosity and masterful lucidity or its feeling for achingly lovely melodies and strongly effective rhythms.

Not autumnal, not reflective, not reserved, and definitely not restrained, this coupling of Brahms' two string sextets may seem to some to be at best wrong-headed and at worst simply wrong. After all, isn't Brahms the composer for whom the adjective autumnal was coined and to whom the adjectives reflective, reserved, and restrained are reflexively applied? Yes, but that doesn't mean all of Brahms' music is autumnal: he was young once, too and the expansive and exuberant young Brahms is emotionally far from the reflective, reserved, and restrained composer of later years.

Aside from skill, soul, and wonderful melodies, the wind chamber music of Carl Reinecke has nothing to offer the listener. And as this splendid 1992 recording re-released by Naxos in 2008 shows, that is more than enough. Performed by members of the Boston Symphony, Reinecke's Wind Octet, Op. 216, and Wind Sextet, Op. 271, are light and airy works with bouncy rhythms, buoyant tempos, warm harmonies, memorable tunes, and an enviable grasp of form and proportion. Used to playing under a conductor, the Boston Symphony musicians' poised and attentive performances prove they are entirely capable of producing balanced interpretations on their own.

Known during his lifetime as the 'French Beethoven', on this SACD Markus Becker teams up with the Ma'alot Quintet for a closer look at Onslow's virtuoso side. Functioning as virtuoso concertos for the salon, both the Wind Quintet op. 81 and the Sextet op. 30 fully satisfied the discriminating taste of Parisian high society. George Onslow was five years old when the French Revolution began and completely disrupted the life of his noble family with British roots. The young Onslow spent the next two decades travelling throughout Europe, received instruction from Dussek in Hamburg, Cramer in London, and finally from the famous Antonín Reicha in Paris after his return to France.

Ferdinand Ries must have made a strong impression as a pianist. Beethoven, a gifted pianist in his own right, even entrusted the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 3 to Ries. The two had known each other since their days together in Bonn, when Riess parents took the half-orphan Ludwig into their family. Ries was Beethovens right-hand man in Vienna, and what he learned from his great model, who was fourteen years his senior, is impressively demonstrated by the Franz Ensemble on its debut album: brilliant virtuosity meets Classical form, and tradition appears in new guise for a very special anticipation of the 250th anniversary of Beethovens birth!

Although Max Reger (1873-1916) is one of the most mature composers of the 20th century, his death in 1916 in the middle of the Great War may have contributed to the relative lack of interest in his work. It is only in the last two decades that his music is starting to be regarded as truly warranting serious investigation. Both works on this disc date from the last five years of Reger's life and both are among his finest chamber pieces. The String Sextet, Op. 118 was promised to be delivered to the Gewandhaus Chamber Music by March 1911, but the composer found the filling of this obligation to be a hard task.