When The World Knows Your Name is the second album from the Scottish rock band Deacon Blue. It was released in 1989 and attained the number 1 chart position in the United Kingdom. "Real Gone Kid" was the band's first Top 10 hit single, reaching No. 8 in October 1988. "Wages Day", "Fergus Sings the Blues", "Love and Regret" and "Queen of the New Year" also reached the UK top 30, and all five of the album's singles made the top 10 of the Irish singles chart.

The Best of Michael Franks: A Backward Glance is a good 15-track collection that is equally divided between soft rock like "Popsicle Toes" and smooth jazz. Any curious listener looking for a one-stop introduction to Franks would be well served with this collection. Among the highlights are "The Lady Wants to Know," "Antonio's Song," "When the Cookie Jar Is Empty," "Tiger in the Rain," "Baseball," "Your Secret's Safe with Me," "When I Give My Love to You," "The Art of Love," "Soul Mate," and "Hourglass".

Jacques Champion de Chambonnières (1601/2-1672) is generally regarded as the founder of the French harpsichord school. There have been a few fine anthologies of his works on CD, including those from Françoise Lengellé, Karen Flint and, best of them all I believe, a fabulous disc by Skip Sempé. However, this present two-CD set from Olivier Baumont is the first to bring us all the music from the composer's two Livres de Pièces de Clavessin, together with a generous helping of his manuscript pieces. And it adds up to a fabulous collection of works.

The concerto, such a familiar feature of the modern concert landscape, seems a simple thing in its opposition of individual and group. But its early history is not so simple; composers had to find structures that would support contrasts between one or more soloists and an orchestra. The "classic" Baroque concertos of Corelli actually represented a simplification of experiments carried out by earlier composers, the Bolognese Giuseppe Torelli central among them. Torelli is usually associated in Baroque listeners' minds with a few trumpet concertos, two of which (labeled sinfonias) are heard here. The short concertos for one or two violins (mostly six or seven minutes long, for three movements) are rarer but very attractive. They don't have the clean symmetries of the Vivaldian concerto, instead exploiting various ways of breaking up a movement into solo and tutti. Although short and essentially compact, each movement has an aspect of free imagination that is nicely brought out by the veteran English early music conductor and violinist Simon Standage, who joins with several other well-known soloists from Britain's historical-performance movement.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) may not have begun the trend toward English pastoral music in the early twentieth century, but he was certainly one of the movement’s leading practitioners. Starting as early as 1900 with his aptly named Bucolic Suite, the man continued to produce charming, serene, idyllic tunes for full orchestra, strings, and chorus right up until the time of his death. In this Naxos collection, English conductor James Judd leads the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in some of the composer’s most famous short works.

Happy Is the Only Way is the debut album by American disco/funk project Sine, released in 1977. The album was produced by Patrick Adams (Gladys Knight, Sister Sledge, Eric B. & Rakim, Salt-N-Pepa, 32 gold and platinum records) and prolific Broadway writer Richard Adler. Venus Dodson (Sugarhill Gang, Faith Evans) and Craig Derry (Michael Jackson, Donna Summer) contribute vocals. For fans of Prince, Chic, Roy Ayers, and The Gap Band.

This 5CD Box Set represents the second half of the story of The Sound. Following their legendary albums for the Korova label, The Sound signed for Statik Records, releasing the mini-album 'Shock Of Daylight', the full length album 'Heads And Hearts' and the double LP live 'In the Hothouse' recorded at London's Marquee. One further album for The Sound was released by Play It Again Sam before the band called it a day. All those recordings are included here with bonus B-Sides, rare unheard demons and an unreleased track. Also included is the added bonus disc - 'Propaganda', the collection of recordings made at Adrian Borland's parents' house before the band signed for Korova.

The title to this 16-track collection has more than its share of quirks and wrinkles. Fully 14 tracks are duplicated with The School of Rock 'n' Roll: Best of Gary U.S. Bonds, released by Rhino in 1990, making it a negligible buy for anyone who already owns that earlier compilation. All the chart hits are here, including "New Orleans," "Quarter to Three," "School Is Out" (again with the original intro clipped off, same as the Rhino comp), "School Is In," "Twist, Twist Señora," and "Dear Lady Twist." New to this collection are the inclusion of "Gettin' a Groove," "Copy Cat," and "I Dig This Station." The latter two items grazed the bottom of the charts, hence their inclusion, but leaving off strong album and single material like "Trip to the Moon," "I Know Why Dreamers Cry," "Mixed Up Faculty," and "Cecelia" to make room for the second go-round of non-charters like "Take Me Back to New Orleans," "Having So Much Fun," "Where Did the Naughty Little Girl Go," and "I Wanta Holler (But the Town's Too Small)" makes this a less than stellar supplement to the Rhino package. But it's a decent alternative, leaving half of a compilation's worth of material between the two best-ofs.

They were the studio musicians behind some of the biggest hits in the 1960s and 70s. From Be My Baby to California Girls Strangers in the Night to Mrs. Robinson You've Lost that Lovin Feelin to Up, Up and Away and from Viva Las Vegas to Mr. Tambourine Man the group dubbed The Wrecking Crew played on them all. Six years in a row in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Grammy for Record of the Year went to Wrecking Crew member recordings. The talents of this group of first call players were used on almost every style of recording including television theme songs, film scores, advertising jingles and almost every genre of American popular music, from the Monkees to Bing Crosby. Notable artists employing the Wrecking Crew's talents included Nancy Sinatra, Bobby Vee, the Partridge Family, David Cassidy, Jan & Dean, the Mamas & the Papas, the 5th Dimension, the Association, the Carpenters, Glen Campbell, Cher, John Denver, the Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, the Grass Roots and Nat King Cole.

One of the better compilations of Three Dog Night material, Celebrate covers all the important bases in the popular singles band's career. There's a brief hint of pre-3DN material from co-lead singers Danny Hutton and Cory Wells (no Chuck Negron), along with one stellar, tragically unreleased track from the band's brief Redwood incarnation, the Brian Wilson-penned "Time to Get Alone." The remainder of this two-CD collection recaps the group's many Top 40 hits along with choice album tracks. The songs are judiciously chosen, and the liner notes provide insights into the band's creative process and internal skirmishes, but there's nothing in the way of remastered tracks or uncovered obscurities. Nevertheless, this is a better option for Three Dog Night fans than any of the numerous single-disc greatest hits collections available, simply because there are no glaring oversights in the song choices. The expanded selection also makes the set a great one to convert anyone not yet warm to Three Dog Night's intricate harmony stylings: just play them the gorgeous non-singles "It's for You," "My Impersonal Life," and "I'd Be So Happy" back to back.

This live recording from Paris in 1972 has two main attraction: the chance to hear a very young - 25 years old, in fact - José Carreras at the outset of his career and, more importantly, I think, the opportunity to hear Vasso Papantoniou, an excellent soprano largely unknown outside her native Greece where she has made her career and who at times sounds uncannily like her compatriot, Maria Callas, especially in the middle of her voice and in her deployment of highly expressive downward portamenti. Her vibrato is faster and, like Callas, top notes can be shrill, be she is a complete artist who obviously impressed the Parisian audience. To hear her at her best either her opening or closing aria will do; listen to her from "M'odi, ah! mo'di" to the end of the opera, where she opts to use the virtuoso aria Donizetti wrote especially for diva Henriette Méric-Lelande and very good she is too.

Our Contemporaries of Mozart series with Matthias Bamert for Chandos counts over 20 CDs to date and is still on-going. The series has uncovered a wealth of previously unavailable eighteenth-century works and its success is illustrated by the numerous accolades bestowed upon it including a number of releases credited with Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. Composers featured include those more well-known from the era, such as Clementi, Salieri and Stamitz to the rarely-heard Gossec, Vanhal and Gyrowetz.

Sarah Connolly is an exemplary Handel singer. Her recital is dominated by two roles she's performed at ENO, with arias from Alcina and Ariodante. 'Scherza infida' is an addictive mixture of vocal elegance and poignant desolation, and 'Mi lusingha' is sung with a beautiful simplicity that lacks for nothing in drama or passion. In contrast, the extravagant coloratura in 'Dopo notte' and the robust 'Sta nell'Ircana' capture the virtuoso thrills of heroic joy. In Dejanira's 'Where shall I fly?', she reminds us that taste and subtlety have an important place even in Handel's tormented and emotionally unstable creation. She avoids contrived intensity and allows the quality of the vocal writing to speak for itself.

When we last left Harry Christophers and his cracker jack a cappella chorus the Sixteen, they were making fabulous recordings for the wonderful Collins label. But that was back in the halcyon days of the CD boom, those far off times called the '90s, when everyone with a little capital and a lot of taste could start a record label. Back in the '90s, Christophers and the Sixteen made more than a dozen wonderful recordings for Collins, among them one of the most moving recordings of Henry Purcell's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary ever made. But the digital boom went bust and so did Collins, taking with it all of Christophers and the Sixteen's discs.

Frank Martin's most important choral work is his a cappella Mass for Double Choir (1922-1926), though he also composed several short occasional choral pieces, which Harry Christophers and the Sixteen present with the Mass to round out this 2005 release. By arranging the program with less familiar works first, Christophers wants listeners to discover the variety of Martin's vocal writing, and to hear pieces that are seldom performed, let alone performed as well as this superb ensemble delivers them.