Various - Western Jubilee: Songs & Stories of American West - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

A great collection of authentic old school country & western tunes featuring a wide array of artists including Jimmy Wakely, Sons of the Pioneers, Foy Willing & Riders of the Purple Sage, Hugh Farr & the Foggy River Boys, the Three Rays and Sons of the Golden West. Originally released in the early 1960's, all selections have been newly remastered.

From the windswept plains and dusty cattle trails to the silver screen's golden glow, the legend of the American West has ridden tall in the saddle of song. 100 Songs of the Wild West, a 4CD collection, gathers a century's worth of musical storytelling, ballads of gunfighters and drifters, cowhands and outlaws, heroes and heartbreakers, tracing the myths and melodies that helped define the American frontier in popular imagination. Together, these 100 songs chart the evolution of the American West in sound, from the campfire ballads of the nineteenth century to the polished orchestrations of the twentieth. The heroes and villains of these tales may be long gone, but their stories live on in melody and verse. The clatter of hooves, the whistle of the wind, the creak of saddle leather, all are heard again here, echoing across a century of music.

The Queen Elisabeth Competition for the piano has provided Muso with an opportunity to launch a series of re-releases of recordings by laureates who have marked the history of this celebrated competition. In particular, the new series allows us to rediscover an artist who has had a major influence on musical life in Belgium for over 50 years Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden. Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden was just 16 when he won the third prize in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1964. His teacher, the renowned pianist and educator Eduardo del Pueyo, gave the go-ahead to his young student, who had just finished his studies at the Conservatory, to take part in a competition whose past laureates had included pianists such as Leon Fleisher, Maria Tipo, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Lazare Behrman- in the wake of the first prize awarded in 1937 to Emil Gilels. Despite his young age, the Belgian musician showed astonishing artistic maturity right from the first round. The archives of the competition allow us to hear again his superb performance of Schumann's Etudes symphoniques alongside Liszt's First Concerto and Beethoven's First Concerto, recorded at a laureates' concert.