Sublimely spiritual work from the great John Coltrane - a live album, but one that's easily one of his most important contributions to music in the early 60s - and a set that we'd rank right up there with his best studio sides for Impulse or Atlantic Records at the time! The group here features McCoy Tyner on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums - plus the very important addition of Eric Dolphy on the leadoff tune "Spiritual" - a number that features Dolphy on bass clarinet alongside Coltrane's tremendous tenor, as both players open up on extended solos that take the tune to nearly 14 minutes in length! Other numbers omit Dolphy, but are still totally great - and Coltrane picks up the soprano sax for a classic reading of "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise" - and the group shifts slightly for the freer "Chasin The Trane", a 16 minute romp done with only tenor sax, drums, and bass - the latter of which is handled here by Jimmy Garrison instead of Workman.

Ruphus is probably one of the most important 70's Norwegian heavy prog rock band (there were a few of those back then: Aunt Mary, Titanic, Popol Vuh/Ace etc.) but their music evolution would differ greatly from those groups. Their debut "A New Born Day" is certainly one of the best Norwegian albums with a very exciting sound and its extraordinarily communicative enthusiasm, even if a bit dated. But three members left after the album release and a new singer was found for their second album "Ranshart", a more progressive record looking towards Yes and Focus, but it was not quite as exciting as the debut. Future jazz-rock legend Terje Rypdal produced their third album "Let Your Light Shine", a jazz-rock album that had much success in Germany, but again, personnel change struck at the worst of times, but their fourth album "Inner Voice" continued the formula…

"My name is Christopher von Deylen - and I am Schiller." At some point during every Schiller concert, von Deylen speaks these ten words and the crowd goes wild. Schiller’s ethereal “global pop”, as his fans and the press have coined the style, gives the listener a feeling of floating in a dream world. Inspired by electronic classics such as Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, and Jean-Michel Jarre, von Deylen is known for creating visionary sounds that are way ahead of their time.

Naxos’ exciting and important American Classics series now includes music of the present day, in this case three recent works by Philip Glass. The Violin Concerto, a work that (surprisingly) adheres to classical conventions, lures us in with beautiful, seductive harmonies. Glass relies both on his trademark arpeggiated technique (sounding in the first movement somewhat like Vivaldi’s “Winter” concerto) and on his favorite harmonic progressions to suggest a sustained melodic line. In the first two movements Glass’ carefully timed harmonic and rhythmic shifts keep you in a happy daze. He breaks the mood in the finale, however, leaving the soloist to practice arpeggios at length until the quiet, serene coda steals in. Adele Anthony, who plays with the kind of skill and grace we would expect in a Mozart concerto, brings off Glass’ work with consummate, convincing musicianship. Company (music for Becket’s prose) for string orchestra is in four movements, characterized by stimulating changes in time signature and rhythm.

The cover may clue you in that you're not getting a conventional recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons here, but just in case that doesn't do the job, this is, in the words of violinist Roby Lakatos (who writes his own utterly distinctive notes), "Vivaldi alla Gypsy." This involves not only a cimbalom but, in some sections, wholesale rewriting of Vivaldi's score (the central movement of "Winter" brings the biggest departure). Lakatos says that he made the album because his label wanted him to record a classical repertory work, but the links between the gypsy tradition and the classics is centuries old, and Lakatos comes from a musical family that taught Franz Liszt back in the day. Lakatos is undoubtedly an exciting and dynamic player. One might object that the logic in when he sticks to the score and when he takes it merely as a stimulus to new music-making is not entirely clear.

After "Carmina Burana" - Carl Orff's most famous piece - the composer went on to write two large compositions for soloists, chorus and instruments which completed the trio of "Trionfi." The current recording presents very fine performances of these two compositions, the "Catulli Carmina" (1943) and "Triumph of Aphrodite" (1951). The last of these is a genuine discovery, a very interesting and attractive take on Greek culture.