Five CD box set containing a quintet of original albums in card LP replica sleeves! Features "Pretenders" (1980); "Pretenders II" (1981); "Learning To Crawl" (1984); "Get Close" (1986) and "Last Of The Independents" (1994).

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Janáček’s birth, this Decca Collector Edition brings together most of the composer’s chamber works and solo pieces plus his most popular orchestral works and the magnificent Glagolitic Mass in a superb digital recording with Riccardo Chailly and Wiener Philharmoniker. The recordings of the solo works and chamber pieces feature one of the world’s most distinguished ensembles: the London Sinfonietta and David Atherton. Their recordings were originally released as a 5-LP set in 1981 and many of these performances have not been available for several years; many also make their first international appearance on CD. This set provides the listener with all the essential non-operatic Janáček in one convenient collection.

This two-fer from the Australian Raven label is a part of a series of Delbert McClinton reissues. All of them come with new liner notes, session photos, and bonus tracks. These two albums, from 1980 and 1981, respectively, represent a renaissance for McClinton of sorts. While he never had a fallow period creatively, The Jealous Kind allowed him a renewed commercial viability even if it was short-lived. Both records were issued by the Muscle Shoals Sound imprint of Capitol Records and were produced by Barry Beckett with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section and horns. While the first disc is centered around diversity in its song choices – by everyone from Larry Henley to Bobby Charles to Van Morrison to Al Green to Jerry Williams – and took radical approaches to reinterpreting the material through soul, blues, funk, rock, and country, the latter chose hard-driving Southern-fried funk and R&B and a relatively close-to-the-vest approach in terms of material – most notably covers of "In the Midnight Hour" and Naomi Neville's "Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette)".

All six albums Joan Baez recorded for A&M during the '70s with non-LP singles-a long-overdue look at a key phase in her career! This box has every note from this fertile period, including the albums Come from the Shadows, Gracias La Vida (Here's to Life), Diamonds and Rust , the live album From Every Stage and the never-before-on-CD Where Are You Now My Son? and Gulf Winds releases.

For the first time in her career, Blues diva Dana Gillespie releases a live album. After four studio sets for Ace, dating back to 1982's Blue Job, this CD is released in response to the demand by her audiences around the world. Recorded with the London Blues Band in Poole in 2006, the set features the dynamic guitar skills of Dino Baptiste. No fancy studio tweaks are used here. Dana and the Band cut the mustard, with the very highest level of musicianship, spiced up with a lot of fun, to create this straight-ahead record of a fabulous gig from a great singer with a great band.

Reissue of this 2004 release from the American singer-songwriter. The album was originally recorded in 1989 but remained unreleased for 15 years. Delaney Bramlett is probably best known for his partnership with his former wife Bonnie. Eric Clapton was so enamored of the duo that he subsequently left Blind Faith and toured with Delaney and Bonnie and recorded a live album with them in Europe in 1970 following which Eric recorded his first solo album with much input from Delaney. Other high profile musicians attracted to the Bramletts were Dave Mason, George Harrison and John Lennon.

Dream into Action is the second studio album by the British pop musician Howard Jones. It was released in March 1985 and reached No.2 in the UK Album Charts. The album also reached the top ten in the US. The album went gold and platinum in many countries including the US and UK. The album contained the hit singles "Things Can Only Get Better" (UK #6, US #5), "Look Mama" (UK #10), "Life in One Day" (UK #14, US #19), and "Like to Get to Know You Well" (UK #4).

Barbirolli made later recordings of all the works on this CD and these have become cornerstones of the catalogue. These are earlier recordings that he did with his own orchestra, the Halle, in the 1950s. To start with, the recording quality is pretty amazing. They were recorded on 35mm film tape rather than half inch recording tape by the Mercury team and have astonishing immediacy and amazingly lifelike. Barbirolli uses an organ in the finale of the Enigma Variations. The recording is a little bass heavy but this is a small caveat. For people who consider Barbirolli to be a bit indulgent as a conductor, these recordings may come as a surprise. The performances are very direct and nicely flowing. They therefore complement rather than compete with the later recordings. Of course, Barbirolli's later recording of the Cello Concerto with Jacqueline du Pre is a very famous and special rendition of the work. However, it is not without its detractors. Andre Navarra, by contrast, plays with golden tone. He plays gorgeously. Highly recommended.

One of the tastiest concoctions of the mid-'70s jazz-fusion era, Chain Reaction finds the Crusaders at the top of their form. The compositions are both accessible and memorable, and the playing is uniformly excellent. Guitarist Larry Carlton delivers some of his finest licks and funkified rhythm work. Wayne Henderson shows there is a place in fusion for the trombone. Wilton Felder does double duty, delivering smoking saxophone lines and funky bass riffs. Joe Sample's Fender Rhodes piano provides a solid chordal foundation and great solos. And the stickman, Stix Hooper, keeps the groove solid. The band employs a variety of rhythms and tempos, and gives the members plenty of room to strut their individual and collective stuff. In fact, "collective" may be the key word here, for this is the sound of a band, not just a group of guys thrown together for a recording session. Chain Reaction was one of the albums that helped lure young, rock and soul-oriented listeners over to check out the jazz side, and should not be missed by those interested in the more accessible, funky side of fusion.

This is the first ever recording of Arvo Pärt’s wonderful vocal music performed by a boys’ choir. The year of release of this album is also the year when the Estonian composer celebrates his eightieth birthday. More than four decades ago, the musician Arvo Pärt fell silent, and went into retreat for eight years. His silence gave rise to a new kind of music, which has gained him international fame. “I have discovered that it is enough if a single note is beautifully played,” Pärt once said. Based on his study of the cathedrals of sound of the Renaissance or even earlier periods, the composer has developed a very personal and original style: music inspired by spirituality, striving to accomplish the ideal of perfect simplicity, of laying bare the pure essence. An everlasting stopping and pausing: eternity. At the same time a continuous flowing and being carried away: the transitory nature of time.

With this amazing album, Dead Can Dance fully took the plunge into the heady mix of musical traditions that would come to define its sound and style for the remainder of its career. The straightforward goth affectations are exchanged for a sonic palette and range of imagination. Calling it "haunting" and "atmospheric" barely scratches even the initial surface of the album's power. The common identification of the duo with a consciously medieval European sound starts here – quite understandable, when one considers the mystic titles of songs, references to Latin, choirs, and other touches that make the album sound like it was recorded in an immense cathedral.

2007 digitally remastered double CD featuring CSN' Stephen Stills' three mid-'70s studio albums. Stills was released in 1975, followed one year later by Illegal Stills. Fans had to wait another two years until the release of Thoroughfare Gap (1978). This two disc set comes in a slimline double jewelbox housed in a slip case featuring extensive liner notes.

GRAMOPHONE AWARD WINNER: INSTRUMENTAL AWARD 2013 & BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE RECORDING OF THE MONTH. Steven Osborne has become one of the most valuable pianists recording today. His recent complete Rachmaninov Preludes release was critically acclaimed as the greatest modern version since Ashkenazy. Now he turns to further cornerstones of the Russian repertoire in this recording of Musorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition (a work which has been in Osborne’s concert repertoire for many years), and two sets of Prokofiev’s miniatures. Musorgsky’s masterpiece is one of the most popular programmatic works of the 19th century. Yet it is also a great pianistic challenge, with the spectacular textures of the climactic movement ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’ requiring the highest technical accomplishments.

Dana Gillespie is nowadays known as a blues/R&B/jazz singer, but in her younger years she had two brief (but impressive) alternative careers. In 1967/68 she made two albums of folk pop, FOOLISH SEASONS and BOX OF SURPRISES. A long time friend and lover of David Bowie, she sang backing vocals on ZIGGY STARDUST and was signed to Bowie's management company Mainman. For that company, she made two LPs, the superb WEREN'T BORN A MAN (1973) and AIN'T GONNA PLAY NO SECOND FIDDLE (1974). Despite production from David Bowie, Mick Ronson and Robin Cable, and the support of the best studio musicians of the day, neither album was a hit and Gillespie concentrated on her sex-bomb film career before reinventing herself as a bawdy blues mama in the 1980s. WEREN'T BORN A MAN is one of the strongest glam-rock-soul albums of the 1970s and and if you've never heard this stuff but you like Bowie and Mick Ronson…you have a treat in store for you! Gillespie was a hugely underrated talent and `Backed A Loser' is worth the price of admission alone.

Sergey Prokofiev was so musically precocious that no less a figure than Reinhold Gliere was employed as his live-in tutor. Gliere’s lessons proved to be both rigorous and inspiring and the young Prokofiev wrote a delightful sequence of works for the piano. Revealing an increasing command of harmony, these miniatures show why he was, at the age of thirteen, the youngest ever student to be enrolled at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. ‘Old Grandmother’s Tales, Op. 31,’ written in New York in 1918 is suffused with nostalgia, while the ‘Six Pieces, Op. 52,’ are vivid arrangements of some of his earlier works.