"Recorded live at the Zurich Jazz Festival in 1980, this was America's first taste of the wild abandon that is the Vienna Art Orchestra and expatriate Lauren Newton's glorious vocal instrument. This is a 13-piece big band led by the beautifully weird compositional, instructional, and arranging craziness of Mathias Rüegg. They trash and revere all traditions -- both historical and avant-garde at the same time -- while using them both along with carnival and circus music, classical forms and fugues, and French salon music. They swing here like a Mingus big band playing "Jelly Roll, But Mingus Rolls Better," with soloists who could care less what the ensemble chart says and vice versa. Newton, mixed high above the prattle, soars with the intensity of a pianist while blowing Jon Hendricks away at his own game. The fun really begins when the ensemble changes tempos two or three times and sections play against each other as in "Concerto Piccolo," even if begun by the lilting line of the title's instrument."

"Leonidas Kavakos tackles a pillar of the violin repertoire in a disc that establishes him as a concerto soloist for Decca Classics. His first concerto disc for Decca features the Brahms Violin Concerto, for which he is joined by one of the world's greatest orchestras and conductors, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Riccardo Chailly. Leonidas is also accompanied by pianist Péter Nagy for Brahms' timeless Hungarian Dances (No.s 1, 2 ,6 and 11) and Bartók's energetic Rhapsodies and Romanian Folk Dances - two great composers hugely influenced by Hungarian folk music."