When he set foot on the stage of Club Doelen on Oct. 28, 1967 in Rotterdam, Thelonious Monk had just turned 50. 15 years later, he disappeared from the music scene and spent his 6 final years in New York, at Pannonica de Koenigswater's, and never touched a piano again. This concert is a testament to his genius. Opening and ending with two “classic pieces”, “Ruby, My Dear” and “Blue Monk”, he led for over 80 minutes the quartet and his accomplices, Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, Ben Riley, and guests. Larry Gales's bass seems to pop out like a jack-in-the-box at the end of “Hackensack”, the brass instruments get carried away towards the middle of “We see”, and billow out and away in the breathtaking “Oska”. And it all leads to a solo time on “Don't Blame Me”: his fingers must be widely spread apart as he hits the keys the way you'd hit and shuffle cards. And then it's time to conclude with one of his classic tunes “Blue Monk”. The architect can set down his tools, what remains is pure art.

The year was 1961, the venue the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. After a memorable performance in Berlin a year earlier, Fitzgerald was once again singing to a packed concert hall. This release has captured that performance, and has been remastered for crystal-clear sound quality. It’s the closest thing to being right there in the audience those five decades ago. (Fondamenta)

• Rachmaninov's Two Suite's and the Symphonic Dances are crucial works in his oeuvre and major works in the two piano literature. • Pianist Frédéric D’Oria-Nicolas, noted for his sonorous piano sound and assured manner, has recorded several critically acclaimed albums for Fondamenta. • Pianist Alexander Kobrin concertizes internationally and recently joined the Artist Faculty of Steinhardt School for Piano Studies at New York University. • Booklet notes in French and English.

Pianist Christian Chamorel (b. 1979) is one of Switzerland’s most widely fêted pianists of his generation. +An invitee to festivals around the world, he is also founder of the annual, popular Swiss Mont Musical festival. +Mr. Chamorel’s new Fondamenta all-Mendelssohn release includes performances of the great composer’s two piano concerti, several of his Songs Without Words, and the Variations Sérieuses. +Laurent Gendre leads the Orchestre de Chambre Fribourgeois.

• Includes the work of Dmitri Shostakovich and Mieczysław Weinberg, who were both friends and rivals. • Violinist Lyonel Schmit plays most often in chamber music settings. His international performance engagements have taken him to Japan, Argentina and Amsterdam. • Pianist Julien Guénebaut is a frequent solo and chamber music recitalist. • Booklet notes in French and English include performer biographies, Anton Chekhov's short story “Rothschild's Fiddle, and the impetus behind the music performed.

Frédéric D’oria-Nicolas writes: “Over nearly twenty years, I have given hundreds of concerts as both a soloist and with chamber ensembles. I was lucky enough to fulfil many dreams: studying with Tatiana Zelikman in Moscow; discovering and performing true masterpieces; playing on extraordinary instruments in fabulous acoustic settings; and sharing the stage with many first-rate musicians who have left me with lasting memories, including pianist Alexander Kobrin, baritone Laurent Naouri, violinists Svetlin Roussev and Alena Baeva, and cellists François Salque and Boris Andrianov. But complete mastery of a concert program for any given performance means playing it time and time again in public. And to do that, one must accept a certain lifestyle, one that leaves little time for family and for exploring other passions. Now that I am the father of two little boys, I often play hide and seek. I also regularly don an Indiana Jones outfit of a new type, and I set off to track down forgotten recordings of legendary artists. Discovering these treasure chests that have remained unopened for decades, sharing such special times with the descendants of Navarra, Gilels and Peterson, hearing these gems for the first time and then restoring them – all these joys cannot be described. At this point in time, I have no doubt that my choices, the new emotions I experience and my demands on myself mean that I cannot round out my life more fully as a concert performer, at least for the moment.”

The Seasons, whose entire cycle is rarely recorded, provides striking testimony to Tchaikovsky's genius. In 1876, Nuvellist, a monthly magazine published in Saint Petersburg, commissioned Tchaikovsky to compose a piece for each issue. The result was twelve pieces, one for each month of the year, whose titles and epigraphs were drawn from the Russian poetry suggested by the editor. Each piece was inspired by nature and scenes of Russian life of the times. They come together in an extraordinary fresco, an allegory of the cycle of human life. Two Nocturnes, that are included here, add a further dimension of poetry and beauty.

In view of the work of new musicians of the same period, such as Miles Davis, Frank Zappa and the Art Ensemble of Chicago (to name only three representatives of the exceptional creative effervescence of this enchanted fleeting period in musical history), at this specific moment in his career Dizzy Gillespie might conceivably have given his peers the impression that he was resting on his laurels. However, the passing of time and there discovery of unpublished recordings such as the one of this 1973 concert in Laren give a fresh, dispassionate perspective on the music that the artist was making then, and help put peremptory judgements into context. With hindsight, there appears to have been a schism within the Gillespie of the 1970s: he readily agreed to go on high-profile tours in line with legends of bebop (such as the Giants of Jazz in 1971) where, following tradition, he would give performances “of himself”, while he could call himself into question, return to the framework of his usual small bands that were familiar yet experimental, rediscovering there, as if by magic, his style – cutting-edge, inventive, virtuoso and exuberant – and his ever-intact joy in performing.

There were many highlights to her musical career: the concerts she gave in the Netherlands between 1968 and 1989 feature prominently among them. This release is a faithful rendition, thanks especially to the remarkable audio quality. Dearie masterfully performed in all the instrumental formations, from solo shows to the great Metropole Orchestra. She sang repertoires of every kind, from film music – she brought a new dimension to “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” – to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”, sensitively revisited. Not to forget a masterpiece whose music she composed, “Winchesterin Apple Blossom Time”, with Marilyn Monroe-style boo-be-doops – two superb versions of which can be enjoyed here, as well as her other compositions, those mentioned, and “Bring All Your Love Along”, whose first recording, made in Laren, 1982, is featured here. Blossom, so aptly named, bids the audience adieu, and makes a graceful bow.

Fondamenta: Kirill Gilels, the grandson of the famous pianist Emil Gilels, made the decision to entrust us with the results of several years of research: he gave us a list of dates and places of the previously unreleased recordings of his grandfather. It was in Amsterdam where at last we succeeded in extracting five recordings of performances Gilels, one of the most important pianists of the twentieth century, had given between 1975 and 1980 at the Concertgebouw - recordings that had fallen into oblivion.