The first thing to note in Shemer's beautifully measured Goldberg Variations is the pitch of his Franco-Flemish harpsichord, a whole tone lower than modern concert pitch.
Folk Music
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Album review: Rolling Stones, Hyde Park Live (Polydor)
Friday 26 July 2013
While acknowledging that there must be omissions when the two sets of the Stones' Hyde Park shows are condensed down into one manageable download album package, I'm frustrated that so many of my favourites have been cut in favour of a more populist sequence. But there's no denying the power of a set stuffed with riffs like “Honky Tonk Women”, “Brown Sugar” and “Jumpin' Jack Flash”, played with that inimitable loose/tight dialectic that characterises the Stones at their best. And it's worth it for “Paint It Black” alone.
In pictures: T in the Park festival - boasting Rihanna, Mumford & Sons and Snoop Dogg
Friday 12 July 2013
The Killers, The Script and David Guetta also among headliners
Album review: Buika, La Noche Más Larga (Chusma)
Saturday 06 July 2013
The Mallorcan singer goes a bit more uptempo on this, her sixth album, and it’s a welcome move.
Video: Country stars
Friday 21 June 2013
See the videos below for tracks from some of country music's biggest, and some of the newest, stars.
Album review: Mark Padmore, Morgan Szymanski, Alec Roth: Sometime I Sing (Signum Classics)
Friday 14 June 2013
Best known for his Schubert lieder, tenor Mark Padmore here performs Alec Roth's arrangements of songs and poems for voice and guitar, ranging from a sequence of Thomas Wyatt poems of love lost, to the more reflective, crepuscular tone of modern verses on nocturnal themes by Vikram Seth.
Album review: Tunng, Turbines (Full Time Hobby)
Friday 14 June 2013
There's a deceptive warmth to Tunng's Turbines, exemplified both by the description, in “Trip Trap”, of a woman as “sweet and sour, a poisonous flower”, and musically by the blend of wispy analogue synth and tingling acoustic guitar in “Heavy Rock Warning”.
Album review: Nino Machaidze, Arias & Scenes (Sony Classical)
Friday 07 June 2013
It's not hard to understand why Nino Machaidze has become something of an overnight sensation since her 2008 breakthrough in Roméo et Juliette at Salzburg. In this selection, the Georgian coloratura soprano combines phrasing of nuanced subtlety with top notes of stunning power, ranging from the lilting, seductive “Quando men vo” from La Bohème to the impassioned gusto of her dramatic Violetta in an extended scene from La Traviata climaxing with a joyous “Sempre libera”.
Album: Georgia Ruth, Week of Pines (Gwymon)
Saturday 18 May 2013
Eisteddfod-reared singer-harpist Georgia Ruth Williams was raised bilingually in Aberystwyth, as far into Wales as you can get without falling off the edge.
Album review: The Handsome Family, Wilderness (Loose)
Friday 17 May 2013
A sort of bestiary of myth, legend and animal analogy, Wilderness uses wildlife traits as jumping-off points for enigmatic tales in typical Handsome Family manner.
Flip chart: 58th Eurovision Song Contest
Sunday 12 May 2013
The 58th Eurovision Song Contest is back this Saturday. Last time the UK, represented by Mr Humperdinck, finished second-last.
Album review: Floraleda Sacchi, Philip Glass: Metamorphosis (Amadeus Arte)
Friday 03 May 2013
Floraleda Sacchi's harp lends itself particularly well to the minimalist logic of Philip Glass's progressions on this anthology of transpositions, never better than on the “Opening” from Glassworks, where the bass pulse beds beautifully among the mirroring figures of the theme.
Album review: Hiss Golden Messenger, Haw (Paradise of Bachelors)
Friday 05 April 2013
There's a strange, archaic feel to the songs of head Messenger, MC Taylor, with their Biblical references and invocations to “cleave ye to the rock”.
Fairport Convention, Union Chapel, London
Monday 11 March 2013
"You look far too young for a Fairport Convention gig," bassist Dave Pegg informs us before admitting "We need an interval now as some of us require the restroom."
Album: Marius Neset, Birds (Edition)
Saturday 09 March 2013
Young Norwegian saxophonist Neset stunned all with his extraordinarily assured debut, but this follow-up is so ambitious the stakes are raised sky high.
- 1 Is the Muslim call to prayer really such a menace?
- 2 Channel 4 to 'provoke' viewers who associate Islam with terrorism with live call to prayer during Ramadan
- 3 US army doctor returns arm to Vietnamese soldier fifty years after he took it as a souvenir
- 4 Police seize possessions of rough sleepers in crackdown on homelessness
- 5 Demand for food banks has nothing to do with benefits squeeze, says Work minister Lord Freud
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War and peace: history revisited in the cities of Southern Belgium - a travel guide in association with the Belgian Tourist Office.
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