A few brush strokes have come to define the otherwise obscure 18th-century composer later known as 'Il Divino Boemo', or the Divine Bohemian: Josef Myslivecek. He was a close friend of Mozart and a musical influence on him. He was one of the most celebrated opera composers in Italy in the 1770s.

For their third recording, the L.A. Four had drummer Jeff Hamilton permanently taking Shelly Manne's place but otherwise utilized their original players (altoist-flutist Bud Shank, guitarist Laurindo Almeida, and bassist Ray Brown). Most unusual in their repertoire on this set is Chuck Mangione's "Land of Make Believe," which was a current pop hit. Otherwise, the tunes are the usual mixtures of bossas, classical numbers, and standards, including "Summertime," "Mona Lisa," and "Nuages." Tasteful and lightly swinging music.

In death metal, quest for maturity has given us the nuanced world of melodic death metal - a world that death metal's stubborn, myopic purists denounce as watered down, but a world in which engaging albums like Above the Weeping World are created. Anyone who doubts that death metal has more than one flavor (ultra-fast, amelodic and consistently vicious) needs to give this 52-minute CD a very close listen. Insomnium's sense of melody and harmony is striking. Exquisitely crafted, the songs on Above the Weeping World demonstrate that the term "melodic death metal" is no oxymoron for Insomnium…

On her second PENTATONE album Maria & Maddalena, star soprano Francesca Aspromonte explores the Two Marys in oratorios by Lulier, Bononcini, Leopoldo I d’Asburgo, Caldara, Perti, Handel and Scarlatti, partly in new editions, documenting the extremely bloom of the genre in the years around 1700. She performs these works together with violinist Boris Begelman as well as the seasoned players of I Barocchisti under the baton of the eminent Diego Fasolis. Traditionally seen as two feminine opposites, with far-reaching moral implications, Aspromonte brings the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene together as two beautiful and strong women who turned their lives upside down by making the choice to dedicate themselves completely to an ideal. Her interpretation of these exceptional pieces explores all the emotions of the Two Marys, constituting a fascinating and profoundly moving portrait of what it means to be a woman.

On this fascinating new release, violinist Fedor Rudin and pianist Boris Kusnezow perform works by mid-20th-century Russian composers Edison Denisov, Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev, including previously unpublished music. French-Russian violinist Fedor Rudin explores and pays tribute to his heritage via this rich collection of works, including his own arrangement of Denisov’s orchestration of Debussy’s ‘Prelude and Duo’, which comes from Debussy’s unfinished opera, Rodrigue et Chimène. Other gems include Denisov’s rarely-heard Three concert pieces for violin and piano (1958), and his previously unpublished Sonatina (1972), which marks a return to his melodic youth after the musically experimental interim years. Those years are represented here by Denisov’s dodecaphonic Sonata (1963). We also hear an unfinished Sonata by Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s ‘Hopak’ from his opera Sorochinsky Fair, and Prokofiev’s unusually theatrical Violin Sonata No. 1.

Known for her vivid portrayals and full, distinctive voice, Elizabeth Llewellyn has established herself internationally as a dramatic and vocal artist of distinction. She has chosen to offer listeners something new by devoting her debut disc to the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, much of it never recorded before. To poetry by Christina Rossetti, Coleridge-Taylors Six Sorrow Songs and A Lament are almost all world-premiere recordings. The Southern Love Songs evoke styles including Latin music and flamenco, and the African Romances, never recorded until now, are to words by African-American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar.

"You can freely paraphrase Louis XIV and say: I am the orchestra! I am the cho¬rus! I am also the conductor!” With these words Hector Berlioz paid homage to a man who was indeed all of these things put together: Franz Liszt.
This eulogy, however, was not only for Liszt, the man; it was also for his instrument and the compositions he wrote for it, an instrument which, also in part thanks to Liszt, became the dominant instrument of bourgeois musical culture in the 19th century: the piano. The reason for this dominance? Liszt himself gave the answer by ascribing to the piano and to the ten fingers of the pianist the ability to reproduce the sonorities and harmonies of an entire orchestra. The improvements made to the piano at that time (around 1825), e.g. the new Erard repetition action and the exponsion of the instrument's range to seven octaves, support these claims.

Robert Palmer's second EMI album, which turned out to be a sales disappointment, seems to combine two different musical concepts in its 18 tracks. The first is a straightforward, rhythm-heavy Robert Palmer rock album that takes up about the first half of the record. The second is a soundtrack for a planned musical that a Palmer bio describes as "a futuristic comedy using telling songs from the '40s to the present day," some produced by jazzman Teo Macero. These include songs like Bob Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" (done reggae style), Marvin Gaye's "Mercy Mercy Me" and "I Want You," and Rodgers & Hammerstein's "People Will Say We're in Love." The idea looks forward to Palmer's next album, Ridin' High, which is comprised entirely of standards, but the mixture of rhythm tracks and string-filled arrangements here makes for a confusing mixture.