The grand dame of country music delivers a potent greatest-hits album her third and her 27th album overall. She had 31 huge hits from which to choose that hadn't previously appeared on her first two greatest-hits albums. Longtime producer Tony Brown and manager/husband Narvel Blackstock chose 12 of those 31 goodies and mixed in three newbies worthy of praise, including the old Kenny Rogers tune "Sweet Music Man," produced by Alison "Make It Sound Pure" Krauss.

The English harpsichordist, organist and fortepianist, Robert Woolley, studied at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London with Ruth Dyson (1970-1975), attended master-classes given by Kenneth Gilbert and George Malcolm, and made his debut in London in 1976.

Josef Mysliveček byl ve své době oceňován především jako operní skladatel (Bellerofonte, Olympiade, Nitteti, Ipermestra…). Jeho úspěchy a popularita byly celá sedmdesátá léta 18. století značné. Přátelství s Wolfgangem Amadeem Mozartem je pak dalším významným kamínkem v mozaice, která tvoří Myslivečkovu osobnost a kompoziční směřování.

Taking off from the precepts of German aesthetics of the middle 20th century, which understandably mistrusted popular culture (or "mass culture") in all its manifestations, the European musical avant-garde has largely rejected influences from the vernacular musical sphere, except insofar as they are skeptically or ironically treated. One of the few to attempt to bridge the gap is Spanish composer Mauricio Sotelo, born in 1961. T

John Robert Cocker OBE better known as Joe Cocker, was an English singer. He was known for his gritty voice, spasmodic body movement in performance, and distinctive versions of popular songs of varying genres. In 1993, Cocker was nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Male, in 2007 was awarded a bronze Sheffield Legends plaque in his hometown and in 2008 he received an OBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music. Cocker was ranked number 97 on Rolling Stone's 100 greatest singers list.

Chopin's two piano concertos are almost always paired with each other on recordings, but this Naxos release, with Uzbek-born pianist Eldar Nebolsin and the Warsaw Philharmonic under Antoni Wit, offers a more inventive and even more illuminating program of early Chopin pieces. The Fantasia on Polish Airs, Op. 13, actually predated the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, and it's quite rarely performed.

Erik Chisholm is a Scottish-born composer and friend of Bartók whose music has experienced a substantial revival. It's not quite correct to call him a Scottish composer, for the last two decades of his life were spent outside Scotland (mostly in South Africa), and Scottish nationalism is only one of the unique mix of influences in his music. It's not that he's "eclectic" in the modern sense.

Here's the kind of big-name, big-budget Mozart concerto recording that's not as common as it used to be. And lo, even one of the giants of contemporary pianism shows signs of having encountered the leaner approach of historical performances, and even of having absorbed them. Maurizio Pollini, best known for Chopin and the other lyric Romantics, conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra from the keyboard.

Jumping from Mozart on Deutsche Grammophon to Bach on Decca, oboist Albrecht Mayer continues to explore transcriptions as well as works originally for his instrument on Voices of Bach. This is a good and necessary thing since neither Mozart nor Bach wrote a sufficient number of works for the oboe to fill out a single disc. In the case of Bach, Mayer has hit on the ingenious solution of including not just Bach's canonical Oboe Concerto, plus his concertos for oboe d'amore and English horn, but also eight arrangements of well-known chorales for chorus and oboe.

Auf der vorliegenden CD werden die Flöte, die Violine und die menschliche Stimme zur "Beute" dieses Mannes: Der Solo-Oboist der Berliner Philharmoniker, Albrecht Mayer, wagt sich nach dem Erfolg seiner Bach-Platte nun an Werke von W. A. Mozart und dessen Zeitgenossen Ludwig August Lebrun.

So good to hear Chris Norman is still turning out great albums. The former Smokie lead singer with the distinctive voice has still got it. A nice variety of tracks here - all well delivered - and a second CD which contains additional tracks, some extended versions of songs on the first CD and 3 karaoke versions - instrumental only - for you to sing along to if you so wish. Well worth the money and so good to hear that one of the voices of the 70's has not faded one bit with the passing years.

Some people still see the name Reger and are afraid to listen to the music because of all the preconceptions about it: It is dense, it is highly contrapuntal, it is harmonically wandering, it is difficult. Certainly there are works written by the great Bavarian composer Hindemith called him “the last giant in music” that could be considered virtually all of those things. And there are works by him by virtually every great composer one can name—that are less inspired, less interesting, that simply work less well than others.

For his new album Maximilian Hornung chose the two cello concertos Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), which he recorded with the Potsdam Chamber Academy under the direction of Antonello Manacorda. The two most technically demanding concerts are among the top works that were composed in the 18th century for the cello. In particular, the rediscovery of the Cello Concerto in C major, which was thought to be lost until the 20th century, made in 1961 for a sensation in the music world.

Maurizio Pollini's second Deutsche Grammophon release with Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden is a live concert recording of Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2, a fitting follow-up to his successful 2011 CD of the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor. That recording marked Pollini's triumphant return to Dresden, but this 2013 recording is less about the significance of the concert and more about the consolidation of Pollini's working relationship with Thielemann and the orchestra.

The Last Judgement was one of the most performed works of the 19th Century; later it was forgotten. Spohr presents a vision of the end of time and the Day of Judgement in an enthralling choral work performed on period instruments for the first time. Bruno Weil directs the Cappella Coloniensis and ChorWerk Ruhr in this benchmark recording.