The city of Eisenstadt was the location of the Esterhazy Court where Joseph Haydn was music director for 25 years. Prince Nikolaus commissioned Haydn to write trios for the baryton, an instrument on which the Prince had become proficient. The baryton is a bowed, stringed instrument similar to the viol but with extra plucked strings that can enable the performer to accompany themselves. For Nikolaus, Haydn wrote string trios of elegance, refinement and poise that encapsulate a rich variety of moods. Seldom performed or recorded, the baryton trios attest to Haydn's limitless powers of invention in every medium.

This new album by the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra and Aapo Häkkinen together with the Audi Jugendchorakademie and bassoonist Jani Sunnarborg featuring late works by composer Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1775–1838) makes an important addition to the recordings of Nordic Classical period works and of early Finnish music. Highlight of the album is the world première recording of Crusell’s Viking-themed ‘The Last Warrior’ (Den sista kämpen), the composer’s last large-scale composition.

Mark Viner’s survey of the complete solo piano music of Alkan continues to turn up discoveries and reveal previously little-known or misunderstood sides of a protean figure in late French romanticism. Viner himself regards Alkan as ‘the most enigmatic figure in the history of music as a whole’.

Max Reger (1873–1916) is noted for his devotion to Johann Sebastian Bach. In the words of musicologist Massimo Mila, Reger was an “outstanding crafter of chamber music, who loved restoring ancient contrapuntal forms: fugues, passacaglias, chaconnes, suites, etc.” His 3 Suites for Viola Solo Op.131d – completed a year before his death – exemplify this contrapuntal restoration and reinvention. They belong to a collection of works with an ancient feel in the style of Bach (Op.131), which also comprises music for solo violin, for two violins and for cello. The three solo viola suites all emphasise the polyphonic nature of an instrument that to this day is still considered monodic.

A beloved trio of Romantic violin sonatas in the passionate and assured hands of an exciting Italian violinist near the start of her career: an auspicious debut on Brilliant Classics. Winner of the 30th edition of Michelangelo Abbado violin competition held in Milan in 2009, Germana Porcu Morano studied in Bergamo, and has gone on to win several other national and international prizes included a scholarship funded by Claudio Abbado. She has performed as a soloist and in chamber ensembles across Europe and in China. She is a member of the Paganini String Quartet, with plans afoot to record the completequartets by Paganini.

Works attributable with certainty to Nicolò Corradini (1585–1646) – likely from Cremona as opposed to Bergamo or Rome as erroneously suggested in the past – are limited to a few printed editions, among them the Primo libro de Canzoni francesi a 4 e alcune suonate (a copy of which has come down to us, printed by Gardano in Venice in 1624). It includes ten French canzonas and four sonatas, works most likely conceived to be performed by several instrumentalists, including one or more possible continuists (because of the speed of some passages and the separation between different parts of often more than an octave).

Hotel California is the fifth studio album by American rock band the Eagles, and is one of the best-selling albums of all time. Three singles were released from the album, each reaching high in the Billboard Hot 100: "New Kid in Town" (number 1), "Hotel California" (number 1), and "Life in the Fast Lane" (number 11). The album became the band's best-selling album after Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975). It has been certified 26× Platinum in the U.S., and has sold over 32 million copies sold worldwide. The album was ranked number 37 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

Einar Englund passed away in 1999 at the age of 83. One of Finland’s main symphonists from the post-Sibelius era, he left seven symphonies and six concertos for various solo instruments. The Cello Concerto was written in 1954. It’s a brilliant work whose melodic and rhythmic patterns bear the unequivocal imprint of Bartók. The latter’s presence is so strong in every detail that one could easily take the piece for a recently rediscovered posthumous concerto by the Hungarian composer! Some kind of achievement in itself… Subtitled “Aphorisms”, the 6th Symphony was composed exactly 30 years later, and shows a much more personal style.

Booker White (his name was misspelled on the label for Shake 'Em on Down when it was issued on Vocalion in 1937, and it stuck) turned his vigorous guitar style, heavy voice, and considerable songwriting abilities into 20 classic blues tracks between 1930 and 1940. Then, following a last session for Vocalion in 1940 when he recorded the striking and passionate group of songs on which his reputation rests (including the ultimately revelatory "Aberdeen Mississippi Blues"), White effectively dropped off the public radar. Until 1963, that is, when graduate students and blues fans John Fahey and Ed Denson sent a letter addressed to "Bukka White, Old Blues Singer, c/o General Delivery, Aberdeen, MS," in an effort to locate the man who had recorded a 78 rpm called "Aberdeen Mississippi Blues" some 20 years earlier…

Alexander Agricola (1446-1506) is little known outside the circle of "early music" connoisseurs, among whom he has cult stature as one of the most original and 'difficult' composers of the Burgundian/Franco-Flemish Renaissance. He was already a 'musician's composer' in his own lifetime, the subtlest exponent of the 'new' manner of composition that no longer assembled the lines of polyphony in ad hoc sequence from the 'tenor' outwards but instead conceived the music in toto from the start.

To follow up on his unexpected boogaloo hit "The Sidewinder," Lee Morgan recorded Andrew Hill's somewhat similar "The Rumproller" but this time the commercial magic was not there. However the trumpeter, tenor-saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Ronnie Mathews, bassist Victor Sproles and drummer Billy Higgins all play quite well on the title cut, two of Morgan's songs (the bossa nova "Eclipso" is somewhat memorable), a ballad tribute to Billie Holiday and Wayne Shorter's "Edda."

Reissue of wild 1972 Danish hard prog with Yes-like vocals, wild, frantic guitar soloing, organ roars, lengthy tracks.
The Old Man & The Sea offers a heavy prog type of music quite typical for that era, organ laden with similarities towards british school of that time like Uriah Heep, Purple or Atomic Rooster. The sound is accesible and melodic but also are some more hard rock parts that is well integrated in the overall prog atmosphere. The opening Living Dead or the ending Going Blind are quite more then ok, hammong melted with bluesy guitars but under prog flag. Nice vocal arrangements, Ole Wedel has a very good tone for such music.

This recording is the World Premiere of Charles Koechlin's Jungle Book and received the Orchestral Gramophone Award and was, memorably, accepted by the son of the composer. Charles Koechlin loved Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and set different parts of the book to music at various points in his career. The first of these - The Three Poems - bear the titles: Seal Lullaby, Night Song in the Jungle and Song of Kala Nag, with texts from The Jungle Book. The music, scored during 1904 - 04, is exotic and evocative. The lullaby mimics the gently lapping of waves as the soprano and chorus spin a soothing tapestry of sound. The Night-Song in the Jungle had a cadence that suggests movement (sung by the soprano, tenor, baritone and chorus) and is a song of well-wishing to the animals of the night. The Song of Kala Nag is a lament of an elephant that has been tamed for his old life in the jungle, sung by the tenor. The poem describes a night in the year when all of the elephants gather to dance together and, rather than being somber, the music is triumphant as the elephant recounts his past freedom and vows to have it again.