Parnassus Avenue - Airs & Graces: Scottish Tunes & London Sonatas - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

The three works gathered here date from Sergei Prokofiev's last years. Despite his declining health as well as the oppressive political climate, the composer could count on the support of great musicians, in particular the cellist Mstislav Rostropovitch. The relationship contributed to the writing of works for cello. The first was the Symphony-Concerto, an improved reworking of a much earlier cello concerto. As in all of Prokofiev's large-scale compositions, we find striking gestures of contrast and confrontation, disturbing juxtapositions of mood, powerful rhetoric followed by sudden passages of tender reflection.The Sonata for Cello solo is an unfinished work a broad and eloquent Andante is heard here in the completion by Vladimir Blok. Finally, the solemn and poetic Sonata for Cello and Piano seems like an oasis of serenity in the midst of Soviet dictatorship. In a clear form devoid of anything that might have shocked the authorities, the work belongs to Prokofiev's best works thanks to it's wealth of melody, from beginning to end. Technical challenges are not absent, as demonstrated by the huge range of cello techniques. Performed by Christian Poltera, these three works bear witness to Prokofiev's creative vitality in the evening of his life, expressed in a simple, clear musical language linked to a new sense of vitality in the face of adversity.

Double vinyl LP pressing. Echo is the tenth studio album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. First released in April 1999, the album reached #10 on the Billboard 200 aided by the singles InchFree Girl NowInch, InchSwingin'Inch and InchRoom at the TopInch, which hit numbers 5, 17 and 19 respectively on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks in 1999. The album was the band's last collaboration with producer Rick Rubin, and was also the last to feature contributions from longtime bassist/vocalist Howie Epstein, who died of a heroin overdose in 2003. Echo was certified Gold (500, 000 copies sold) by the RIAA in July 1999, only three months after it was released. Echo is the only Heartbreakers' album to contain a lead vocal from another member of the band Mike Campbell on InchI Don't Wanna FightInch.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.