Tennessee blues poet Sleepy John Estes made his recorded debut in 1929 with the song "Broken Hearted, Ragged and Dirty Too". In '35 John teamed up with Hammie Nixon and they went on to record many classic sides together until WWII. After a twenty-year absence Delmark's Bob Koester rediscovered John and presented him to the new blues audience in '62. This led to a series of LPs and a reinvigorated career. This album was recorded in November of 1974 at concerts in Japan, one of the very first tours of that country by a blues artist - preceded only by a B.B. King State Department appearance. The Estes tour was a great success and even resulted in an Estes track appearing on the Japanese Top 100 chart! 73 minutes.

Bloch's Israel Symphony is a large-scale work anticipating the Hollywood film composers' styles for biblical epics... The vigour and spontaneity of Abravanel's Utah performances... transferred to CD with great success" [Penguin Guide] "Nelsova's Schelomo, with Abravanel's support, is a fitting setting for the cellist who was Bloch's own choice for the work." "The Three Jewish Poems hints towards Respighi's Roman triptych (then yet to be composed)... Bloch's subtly coloured canvasses seem custom-built for an age increasingly attracted to late-romantic musical tone-painting. We are therefore greatly indebted to Sedares for these clear-headed, sensitively turned performances, extremely well engineered. Anyone with a taste for atmospheric evocations cannot fail to enjoy" [Gramophone]

"We can start with the celestial heights of Casals and Serkin. These discs were made at the Prades Festival concerts in 1952 and 1953, and now and then you will hear the great man Casals grunt as he attacks a phrase. Casals was 76 in 1952, and his bow arm was in less than perfect control but this performance is classic."
-– Herbert Russcol, WQXR, 1969

"Humane and wonderfully wise…a revelation of warm, human, profound interpretation."
-– Edward Sackville-West (1901–1965), novelist and music critic

"Excellent both tonally and in matters of balance. Two perfectly matched musicians operate here. For every bold stroke of the Casals bow there is an equivalently authoritative gesture from Serkin."
-– Harold Schoenberg, (1915 – 2003) author and New York Times music critic