Gold Dust: Live at the Royalty captures Sandy Denny's final concert. The show (performed on Sunday, November 27, 1977) was intended to be the first date of an 11-city tour, but it turned out to be her last show ever. It certainly wasn't the way anyone wanted Denny to leave the stage, but it remains an affecting, surprising farewell. There are familiar items, to be sure, but the concert also finds her breaking new ground and moving away from traditional folk-rock to an edgier sound. These are subtle distinctions that only hardcore fans will notice, but those fans will find Gold Dust a minor treasure.

Paris certainly held great attraction for German composers of the late 18th century. One of them was Henri-Joseph Rigel, born as Riegel in Wertheim in Germany. Rigel was already active as a composer of orchestral music while still in Germany, where he studied with Niccolò Jommelli in Stuttgart. It is not exactly known when he went to Paris, but in 1768 he established his own residence in the French capital. In that same year he married, and in 1769 and 1772 his two sons were born.

La Catena d Adone was first performed in 1626 and marked the arrival of opera in Rome. With all the characteristics of the genre, a pastoral tale in one prologue and five acts, it chronicles the tumultuous love lives of Adonis, Apollo, Venus, and Falsirena. The frivolous and sensual even erotic tone is placed in sharp contrast with Christian morality in a perfectly mastered Recitarcantando style supported by a wealth of instruments. Besides being a world premiere recording, the opera inaugurates the arrival of a very young conductor to the Alpha catalog. Nicolas Achten is also a director, singer, and player of theorbo, harpsichord, and harp, and follows the path set by great musical pioneers such as Vincent Dumestre and Pablo Valetti.

In a new recording of music by Alessandro Scarlatti, Josetxu Obregóns La Ritirata parades its dazzling vocal and instrumental talents in presenting the four cantatas which involve recorders and violins, together with an additional standalone soprano aria, for a further Glossa Neapolitan-flavored release. Drawn from his well over 800 secular cantatas these works combine fully-integrated, imaginative recitatives, expressive and dramatic arias and colorful and exacting instrumental sinfonias and ritornelli into elegant and compact wholes, and featuring poetic texts which typically followed the aspirations of the Accademia degli Arcadi literary circle initiated in Rome around the turn of the eighteenth century.